Udayakumar custody death case: Kerala High Court sets aside conviction of police officials

The Kerala High Court has set aside the conviction of five police officials, including two personnel who had been sentenced to death by a CBI court, in connection with the alleged custodial torture that is suspected to have led to the death of Udayakumar, a youth from Thiruvananthapuram in 2005.

The CBI had taken over the probe into the case in 2008 after Udayakumar’s mother Parvathy Amma approached the High Court.

While K. Jithukumar and S.V. Sreekumar had been awarded the death sentence (Sreekumar had died during the pendency of appeals) on the charge of murder, T.K. Haridas, T. Ajith Kumar and E.K. Sabu had been awarded three years imprisonment for alleged destruction of evidence.

On Wednesday, a Bench of Justice Raja Vijayaraghavan. V and K.V. Jayakumar observed that there were glaring lapses in the CBI probe into the case. They included converting an eyewitness into an approver, and of indiscriminately arraying all witnesses and coercing them to become approvers, apart from extracting their assent on the condition that they parrot the CBI’s version of events. In addition, there are major contradictions in the testimonies of the prosecution witnesses.

Moreover, the findings recorded in the impugned judgment that held the appellants guilty of charges framed against them are based on conjectures and surmises and hence unsustainable under law.

The prosecution’s case was that Udayakumar was taken into custody from a park in the State capital along with an alleged history sheeter.

Suspecting that ₹4,000 in Udayakumar’s possession was stolen money, police personnel are alleged to have tortured him at the Fort Police Station. This, it was alleged, that this led to his death.

A post mortem had revealed that he had over 40 injuries, on his thighs and lower abdomen.