The Crime Branch-CID (CB-CID) team, which is investigating the sensational dacoity-cum-murder of a security guard at the estate bungalow of former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa at Kodanad in the Nilgiris in 2017, has sent mobile phones used by the accused persons to a government forensic laboratory for analysis.
Sources privy to the investigation said eight mobile phones were sent to the laboratory for cyber-forensic analysis some weeks ago. The investigating agency is hoping to get digital evidence of the planning and execution of the dacoity-cum-murder from the analysis.
The CB-CID is also waiting for the results of a forensic analysis of call detail records (CDR) of several phone numbers, which were obtained from the BSNL as magnetic tapes. The agency had sent 10 magnetic tapes containing the call detail records of more than 30 persons to the National Forensic Sciences University (NFSU), Gandhi Nagar, earlier this year.
A team of experts from NFSU, which has the technology to examine the now obsolete magnetic tapes, is expected to visit the BSNL office in Tiruchi soon.
CB-CID officers are hoping that the results of the analyses of the mobile phones and the CDRs will shed more light on the crime. The CDR results are vital for the probe as the agency can use them to check whether suspects, who have come on the radar of the agency, had been in touch with the accused persons who were present at the scene of crime.
It was on the intervening night of April 23 and 24 of 2017, a group of men gained entry into the bungalow, jointly owned by Jayalalithaa and her confidante Sasikala, after gunning down security guard Om Bahadur. There are 13 accused persons in the case, including Jayalalithaa’s former driver C. Kanagaraj, who died in an alleged road traffic accident in Salem a few days after the crime.
