Photos in TP case not tampered with, say defence lawyers

October 11, 2013 12:22 pm | Updated November 16, 2021 09:04 pm IST - Kozhikode:

Countering the argument of the prosecution, defence counsels in the T.P. Chandrasekharan murder case told the trial court here on Thursday that they had not tampered with the photographs taken by a freelance photographer that claimed to prove the alibi of some of the CPI(M) members who were accused in the case.

The defence lawyers submitted before R. Narayana Pishradi, judge, Special Additional District and Sessions Court (Marad Cases), that they had not produced any altered photographs of the CPI (M) torch rally held at Onchiyam in which the accused leaders had participated between 2.50 and 3.40 p.m. on April 2, 2012.

The time and date was when, according to the prosecution, the accused met at a flower shop, owned by Padayankandi Raveendran, CPI(M) Orkatteri local committee member, to hatch the conspiracy to kill Chandrasekharan.

A photographer, P.M. Bhaskaran, of Geetha Studio at Orakkateri, had previously deposed before the court that he had taken photographs of the accused between the mentioned time on April 2, 2012. However during cross examination he admitted that the date and time of the photographs could be modified using specialised software. Special Public Prosecutor P. Kumarankutty had also argued that the date and time could be modified in the properties menu of the folder using image management software. However, defence counsels on Thursday said the exact time and date of a photograph taken could be retrieved even if they were altered. They also submitted in court the Exif viewer software technology for recovering the time and date of a modified image.

Earlier, a prosecution witness Suresh Babu, who was a plant operator at the Orkatteri Diary Co-operative Service Society, told the court that he had overheard CPI (M) district secretariat member P. Mohanan, Onchiyam area secretary C. H. Ashokan, area committee member K. K. Krishnan, and Kunnummakkara local committee member K. C. Ramachandran hatching the conspiracy at the flower shop.

Meanwhile, K. Vasu, branch secretary of CPI (M) Varisakuni branch and a defence witness, told the court that T.P. Rameshan aka Dineshan, the second prosecution witness in the case, was the polling booth agent of RMP candidate K. K. Sadasivan, who contested from the fourth ward of Chorodu grama panchayat in the local body elections held in 2010.

Rameshan, an eyewitness to the killing, had told the court that he was not an activist of RMP.

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