THRISSUR: An urgent meeting of top officials associated with the investigation into the Jishnu Pranoy suicide case was held at the Thrissur IG office on Thursday after which IG M R Ajith Kumar gave directions for the arrest of the third accused in the case, vice-principal K N Sakthivel, and fourth accused, exam invigilator C P Praveen, without any delay. According to rural SP N Vijayakumar, the main reason for the High Court granting anticipatory bail to the first accused P Krishnadas, chairman of the Nehru Group of institutions, and second accused Sanjith K Viswanath was by citing that they were not present on January 6 in the college when Jishnu was trapped on false charges of copying during the examination and was later brutally beaten up by college authorities.
The investigation team is banking mainly on the statement of the college principal S. Varadarajan who had refused to conspire with Sakthivel and C P Praveen as they forcefully brought Jishnu to the principal’s room after trapping him on false charges of copying. “The principal has said in his police statement that Jishnu was trapped and he would not support the vice-principal and the staff in such a ploy against Jishnu. In that context, the arrest and questioning of Sakthivel and Praveen are of utmost importance,” Vijayakumar said. The police hope that the conspiracy and abetting charges involving other college officials would be revealed after arresting and questioning them. According to the SP, the police has been sincerely trying to arrest them but in vain.
Even though the investigation team claimed to recover blood stains from the board room of the college, called the ‘torture cell’, on February 17 and there were reports on March 14 that they matched with the blood group of Jishnu, SIT officers and the SP are now not ready to make any specific statement. But, the SIT members had reached Jishnu’s native place Nadapuram on March 14 and collected the blood samples of Jishnu’s father and mother at the taluk hospital to conduct the DNA test. Even though Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Thursday reiterated that the SIT was conducting the investigation effectively, Jishnu’s mother Mahija and uncle K K Sreejith have pointed out lapses on the part of the police as they could not arrest and get any of the accused in police remand even 50 days after the FIR was registered against them on February 13. The High Court on Thursday postponed the hearing of the anticipatory bail of Sakthivel and Praveen to Friday.
