The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) on Friday took over the probe into the case booked against the former Minister K.J. George and IPS officers A.M. Prasad and Pronob Mohanty for allegedly abetting the suicide of Deputy Superintendent of Police M.K. Ganapathy.
The first Additional JMFC court in Madikeri, which had initially directed the Madikeri Town police to register an FIR against Mr. George and the two IPS officers, on Friday allowed a team of CID officials to continue the investigation in the light of a High Court direction.
The court, however, asked the complainant, Nehal Ganapathy, son of Ganapathy, to file objections to the probe, if any, on September 19.
The CID, which has been vested with the investigation of the case of unnatural death, registered hours after Ganapathy was found dead on July 7, will be clubbing both the cases and file a consolidated report.
After the Madikeri court allowed them to proceed with the investigation, a team of CID officials, led by Superintendent of Police Kumaraswamy collected details of the probe conducted so far by sub-inspector of Madikeri Town police station Bharat, who was also the investigating officer in the case.
On July 18, the Madikeri court had directed the Madikeri Town police to register a case under Section 306 of the IPC, which deals with abetment of suicide, based on a private complaint by Mr. Nehal. While Mr. George, who resigned as Minister for Bengaluru City Development in the wake of the court’s direction, has been named as the main accused, Mr. Mohanty and Mr. Prasad have been named as second and third accused respectively.
The CID taking over the probe also follows a direction from the High Court to the government recently to ensure that the State police chief entrusts the probe to an agency or a police officer whose work should be supervised by an officer who is of a rank higher than the IPS officers accused in the case, to ensure free and fair investigation.
