‘Witness accounts not cooked up’

Vadakara Deputy Superintendent of Police (Dy.SP) Jossy Cherian, a member of the special team that probed the murder of Revolutionary Marxist Party (RMP) leader T.P. Chandrasekharan, told the trial court on Thursday that the police had not made up the statements of the witnesses to strengthen the case.

Mr. Cherian was being cross examined before R. Narayana Pisharadi, special judge, Special Additional District and Sessions Court (Marad Cases) here at Eranhipalam. The case relates to a gang allegedly hired by the Communist Party of India (M) hacking to death Chandrasekharan at Vallikkad, Onchiyam, on May 4, 2012.

He said it was only after the arrest of the alleged assailants N.K. Sunilkumar, aka Kodi Suni, T. K. Rajeesh, aka Rajeesh Thundikkandi; K.K. Mohammed Shafi; and Shijith, aka Annan, that the statement of the witnesses had been recorded.

However, defence lawyer B. Raman Pillai argued that the statements were recorded on May 9, 2012, and that the police had altered this date after the arrest of these accused. If the call data records of the mobile phones of the accused were examined, it could be found that several accused had not been present at the places as demonstrated by the prosecution.

The Dy.SP said the call data records had been collected even before the submission of the charge sheet in the court. The names of first four accused were mentioned in the statements of the first and second prosecution witnesses in the case. However, the defence counsel said this particular information was found missing in the remand report, and the records produced by the police before the court.

Mr. Cherian said he had not carried out any investigation into the political affiliation of the second, third, fourth, and fifth prosecution witnesses. He had no idea whether they were RMP activists or not.

The defence counsel also doubted the veracity of the time (10.12 p.m.) shown on the watch recovered from the body of Chandrasekharan. The murder could have occurred between 9 p.m. and 9.30 p.m. during the power outage at Vallikkad. But the police fixed 10.12 p.m. as the time of murder so as to recruit bogus witnesses, he suggested.

However, the police officer dismissed this suggestion stating that evidence before the court confirmed the murder took place at the time mentioned in the charge sheet. Mr. Cherian also refuted the allegation that he had passed the news of the arrest of the accused to the media on a daily basis.

He told the court that he had prepared the observation mahassar regarding inspection of the Thalassery and the Koothuparamba area committee offices of the CPI (M). No political motive could be attributed to preparing such mahassars, he said.