The Kerala High Court on Friday asked the State government to issue without delay, a notification rectifying the mistakes in the earlier notification on the takeover by the CBI of the four cases relating to human trafficking through the Nedumbassery airport. Justice S.S. Satheeschandran issued the directive when the bail application of Raju Mathew, suspended sub-inspector at the immigration wing of the airport, came up for hearing.
The court expressed the hope that efforts would be made to send a corrected notification to the Centre with a request for handing over the cases to the CBI.
When the case came up for hearing, the counsel for the CBI submitted that the notification issued by the government had wrongly motioned the crime number of another case, instead of the cases registered by the Nedumbassery police. He submitted that steps were in progress for taking over the cases. The CBI was awaiting the corrected notification to register the crime consolidating all the four crimes registered in connection with the human trafficking cases. A corrected notification was essential for taking over the cases, he said.
The prosecutor submitted that a corrected notification would be issued by the State government without delay.
The court asked the prosecutor to produce the notification before the court and adjourned the hearing of the case till June 25.
The court had earlier impleaded the Director of the CBI as an additional respondent to hear the CBI’s version regarding the delay in the takeover of the probe. It had observed that the government had approached the CBI for handing over the cases to it and expressed its displeasure over the delay in handing over the cases.
The government had decided to entrust the CBI with the probe following a High Court observation. The court had observed that the investigation carried out by the State police against the two accused was unlikely to have any desired result and that the State police force did not have the wherewithal even to trace the persons who had left the country without proper emigration clearance.
