Sreejith’s two-year battle for a CBI enquiry into the circumstances of his brother’s death in Kerala police custody in 2014 yielded result on Friday with the premier investigating agency informing the State government that it had taken over the probe.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s private secretary M.V. Jayarajan handed over a copy of the CBI notification to Mr. Sreejith, who has been on a sit-in on the pavement in front of the Government Secretariat in Thiruvananthapuram for the past 770 days.
Mr. Sreejith, however, appeared unimpressed. He said he would call off his agitation only after the CBI began its processes. “The government could have responded to my pleas earlier. The injustice still rankles", he told newspersons.
Mr. Sreejith’s protest was a lonely one for long. Suddenly, a social media post showing him curled up on the pavement in the rain against a backdrop of posters demanding justice for his brother went viral and became a catalyst for his cause.
His one-man fight to bring his brother’s alleged assailants to book resonated strongly with youth.
On the street, Mr. Sreejith found himself surprisingly mobbed by students, actors, youth icons, politicians of all hues, singers, poets and artists. His lone agitation appeared to gather pace as a potentially emotive mass movement the government could no longer afford to ignore.
Finally, Mr. Vijayan granted Mr. Sreejith and his mother an audience and agreed to pursue their demand with the Central government.
Findings of State Police Complaint Authority
The controversy surrounding Sreejiv's death is centred on the findings of the State Police Complaint Authority (SPCA) that directly contradicted the law enforcement's version.
Several police enquiries in 2014 concluded that Sreejiv consumed pesticide crystals he had hidden in his underwear after the police arrested him on the charge of breaking into a mobile phone shop. Investigators also furnished a death note purportedly penned by him before his arrest to suggest that he had a suicide streak.
In 2016, the SPCA chairman and former High Court judge K. Narayana Kurup shockingly upended the police findings, bringing it back into sharp public focus.
He suggested in his inquiry report that Sreejiv could be a victim of custodial torture. Mr Kurup also doubted the authenticity of the purported suicide note, questioned the forensic conclusions and raised the possibility that Sreejiv could have been force-fed poison in police custody.
His conclusion brought Sreejiv's death into sharp public focus. It put the State police under a cloud and also lent a loud voice to the clamour for a CBI investigation.
