Thiruvananthapuram: Conflicting versions about Balabhaskar death surface
Thiruvananthapuram: The statement of Shamnad, a juice shop owner, from whose establishment violinist Balabhaskar had drunk juice late at night during the fateful day of the musician’s death, has created quite a deal of confusion.
Earlier, even though he had reportedly revealed that Prakash Thampy, an accused in the gold smuggling racket and a friend of Balabhaskar, had taken the hard disc of the CCTV installed in his shop, he retracted the statement in front of the media.
During the night when Balabhaskar met with an accident that eventually killed him, he had tender coconut from Shamnad’s shop at Pallimukku in Kollam.
Shamnad is learnt to have have told the Crime Branch that Prakash Thampy came to his shop along with the employees who installed the camera and took away the disc in the initial stages of the probe. They were later returned.
The court has given sanction to the Crime Branch to question Prakash Thampy who is lodged in Kakanad jail after being arrested by the DRI. He will be questioned in two days.
The disc was later produced in the court by crime branch DySP K. Harikrishnan. After, the present revelation, the disc was recovered from the court and sent for forensic examination to examine if they tampered or not.
The confusion started when owner of the juice shop retracted his statement when speaking to the media saying he didn’t know Prakash Thampy and nobody took his disc. He also stated that he had given the disc to crime branch DySP Harikrishnan only. Balabhaskar’s wife Lekshmy had stated that it was Arjun, who drove the car from Thrissur to Thiruvananthapuram. However, Arjun told police that it was Balabhaskar who drove it. The Crime Branch decided to examine the clippings to find who drove the vehicle.
Arjun, a native of Thrissur is suspected to have driven the vehicle when Balabhaskar met with the accident. He is believed to have fled the place. The investigating team had asked his relatives to produce him. He reportedly fled to Assam.
The crime branch wants to question him in detail to find who drove the vehicle at the time of the accident.
The crime branch examined the CCTV as there were conflicting statements about who drove the car. In his statement to the local police, driver Arjun had said Balabhaskar drove the car. However, Lakshmi, wife of the violinist and the person who reached the accident spot first, had revealed that Balabhaskar was in the back seat. Before being arrested by the DRI in the gold smuggling case Prakash Thampy had stated that examined visuals to know who drove the car.
The investigating team confirmed Balabhaskar had financial dealings with the doctor P.M.S. Surendranath in Palakkad and Vishnu, absconding in the gold smuggling case. Jishnu, the son of the ayurveda doctor who was to be questioned, was in Himalayas while Arjun was in Assam. As a result the police could not question both of them in the case.
Meanwhile, the CCTV visuals of the motor vehicle departments had shown that the car of Balabhaskar was over speeding in the night he met with the accident. He only covered the distance from Thrissur to Thiruvananthapuram in three hours. The CCTV visuals at Chalakudi in Thrissur district also found that the car in which Balabhaskar was travelling was speeding above the permissible limit.
