The Kerala High Court on Thursday ordered a CBI probe into the death of film actor Kalabhavan Mani.
The court directed the CBI to take over the investigation in a month. The directives were issued by Justice Sunil Thomas while allowing a writ petition for a CBI probe filed by Mani's wife Nimmy and his brother K.R. Ramakrishnan. The actor died on March 6, 2016, after he was admitted to a private hospital in Kochi.
Rejecting the contention of the CBI that it could not take over the investigation, the court observed that the CBI could not shirk its responsibility on the excuse of lack of manpower and infrastructure. The death of a public figure could not be treated as an ordinary case.
The court, therefore, felt that it was necessary to direct the CBI to probe the case to do complete justice to the petitioners and to instil the confidence in the public mind.
The matter being the death of a well known film actor, apart from the special interest of the family members and relatives, the public at large, even outside the State, had a considerable interest in knowing the truth, the court said.
Besides, the facts of the case appeared to be either complex or to have diverse manifestation, with certain hidden facts, missing links or undetected leads, which were to be unearthed with a more sophisticated approach, the court observed.
The court said the State was justified in taking a decision to refer the case for a CBI investigation.
The medical board constituted by the State government had submitted a report before the court saying that Mani had “died of methyl alcohol poisoning.” The report pointed out that common pesticides, drugs, alkaloids, and metallic and volatile poisons had not been detected in the contents verified by the board.
The State government had ruled out the homicide theory in the case by dismissing the possibility of Mani being poisoned to death. While the test conducted by the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) in Hyderabad ruled out pesticide content in the visceral samples, the Regional Chemical Examiner's Laboratory at Kakkanad had found substances of a pesticide —chlorpyrifos.
As a result of the two divergent test reports, the samples of blood, urine, viscera, and gastric aspirates were sent for detailed examination by the CFSL. The result had detected only methyl alcohol and ethyl alcohol in the samples. It was revealed in the post-mortem that Mani had severe cirrhosis of liver, jaundice, kidney dysfunction, and severe type 2 diabetics mellitus. The medical board gave its opinion after going through all these test results.
