Was key evidence related to the death of Deputy Superintendent of Police, Mangaluru, M.K. Ganapathi brushed under the carpet? Ganapathi allegedly killed himself in a lodge in Kodagu last year.
A report by the Forensic Science Laboratory, submitted to the Criminal Investigation Department, notes that crucial evidence such as mobile call record details, messages and even some files stored in a hard drive and a pen drive belonging to the officer have been erased. The report does not specify when they were deleted or what the deleted files could have contained.
However, an FSL source claimed that it pointed to “an effort to derail investigations” and perhaps “save many people, including politicians and top police officials”.
The report was submitted by FSL Assistant Director Kumuda Rani to the CID cyber cell in September 2016. It specified that forensic experts examined Ganapathi’s mobile phone, two SIM cards, an 8 GB pen drive, a 320 GB hard drive, and a microSD card.
In the 8 GB pen drive, five video files, 93 images and 199 files have been deleted, according to the FSL report. The FSL officials who analysed the 320 GB hard drive said that 100 emails , 2,699 Word files, 910 Excel files, 145 PDF files, 2,500 images, 73 audio and video files, 791 text files, and 31 PPT files had been deleted.
The mobile phone could not be analysed as it was password protected, but the FSL team was able to access his Cloud account and get call record details. Here, too, they found that calls he made before his death have been erased.
One call was made from each of the SIMs cards. One SIM card had three contacts and the other had 15 contacts stored in its memory. Other data collected from the SIM cards were also submitted.
“Though the report was submitted to the CID an year ago, there has been no effort to probe this angle,” sources in the department said.
Sources said there were many loopholes in the investigation which the police had not looked into. There were reports from the police that two rounds were fired from Ganapathi’s service revolver before he allegedly hanged himself.
“However, there were no residue marks on his hands, and no mention about it during the spot inspection. Even fingerprints have not been recorded from the scene of crime, and those from the room where his body was found have not been analysed properly,” said sources.
