Supreme Court of India issued notice on Central Bureau of Investigation appeal against acquittal in Udayakumar custodial death case. Bench of Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta listed matter for May 19 hearing.
The Supreme Court issued notice on an appeal filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The appeal challenges a Kerala High Court order that had set aside the convictions and acquitted all accused in the 2005 Udayakumar custodial death case.
A bench comprising Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Sandeep Mehta issued notice in the Special Leave Petition filed by the CBI, and fixed the matter for further consideration on May 19.
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The CBI’s petition is against four former police personnel whose convictions had earlier been upheld by the trial court.
The accused named in the Special Leave Petition are:
- Jitha Kumar K,
- T Ajith Kumar,
- EK Sabu,
- TK Haridas.
Factual Background:
The underlying case relates to the custodial death of 28-year-old Udayakumar. According to the prosecution, he was taken into police custody from Sreekandeshwaram Park in Thiruvananthapuram at around 2:15 a.m. on September 27, 2005.
He was taken first to Fort Police Station and later to the office of the Circle Inspector, where he was allegedly subjected to custodial interrogation. Udayakumar was declared dead the same night at approximately 11:40 p.m. at the Medical College Hospital. The post-mortem report attributed his death to severe crush injuries to both thighs.
The prosecution claimed that police personnel, including constable Jitha Kumar and another constable, assaulted Udayakumar inside the Circle Inspector’s office. It was alleged that he was made to lie on a wooden bench and beaten with a bamboo cane on the soles of his feet. The prosecution further alleged that a GI pipe was used to inflict force on his thighs, resulting in crushing of muscle tissues. The assault was alleged to have continued for nearly one and a half hours.
The prosecution also alleged that senior officers then Sub-Inspector T Ajith Kumar, Circle Inspector EK Sabu, and Assistant Commissioner of Police TK Haridas were involved in a conspiracy to suppress the incident and shield those responsible. The prosecution alleged that entries in the General Diary were stopped at 7:30 p.m. in order to conceal the illegal detention, and that telephone communications were diverted to prevent disclosure of the incident.
Another set of allegations involved the creation of fabricated records after Udayakumar’s death. The prosecution claimed that a backdated FIR was shown as registered at 8:00 p.m., along with fabricated arrest memos, inspection memos, property registers, and remand applications. These were alleged to have been prepared to support a false narrative, and subordinate police personnel were allegedly coerced into preparing and later defending these records.
CBI Investigation and Kerala High Court Ruling
The investigation was first carried out by local police and the CBCID, and was later transferred to the CBI. The CBI carried out further investigation, added accused persons, and obtained pardon for some police personnel who later turned approvers.
After trial, the trial court convicted the accused. It sentenced two principal accused, including Jitha Kumar, as well as another officer who later died while the appeal was pending before the High Court, to death. Senior officers were convicted for conspiracy and related offences.
However, when the matter reached the Kerala High Court, the High Court while dealing with the death sentence reference under Section 366(1) of the CrPC and also the appeals filed by the accused acquitted all five accused former police personnel including the one who had received a death sentence from the trial court in the controversial Udayakumar custodial murder case involving the Fort Police Station in Thiruvananthapuram in 2005.
A bench of Justices V Raja Vijayaraghavan and K V Jayakumar set aside the convictions and sentences of former ASI K Jithakumar (A1), former Crime Branch DSP T Ajith Kumar (A4), retired SP E K Sabu (A5), and retired ACP T K Haridas (A6). The court said there were “serious lapses in the CBI investigation.” Jithakumar and S V Sreekumar (A2) had been awarded the death penalty by the CBI Special Court, while the others had been sentenced to three years’ imprisonment.
Sreekumar died in 2020 during the pendency of the appeal. Another accused, Soman (A3), had also died while the trial was underway.
The initial CBCID probe had arraigned only three officers as accused, but the trial collapsed when most of the prosecution witnesses turned hostile. Udayakumar’s mother then approached the High Court, which ordered a CBI probe. The CBI arraigned eight additional police officers as accused, and on the same day, applications seeking pardon were filed before court. Pardon was granted on the condition that they make a full and true disclosure of all facts and circumstances. The CBI later submitted its final report naming six officers as accused.
The bench ruled that the CBI committed a serious illegality by filing its final report before the magistrate court in a case already committed to the sessions court, thereby violating the accused’s right to a fair trial. The bench also found the process used to seek pardon before the Chief Judicial Magistrate to be ex facie illegal and inconsistent with the mandatory provisions of the CrPC.
The High Court further held that the testimonies of approvers were wholly unreliable and could not serve as the basis for conviction. It observed that the CBI’s conduct including converting an unrelated eyewitness into an approver, coercing witnesses at gunpoint to support its version of events, filing pardon applications before a court without jurisdiction, and submitting a supplementary report before another court that also lacked jurisdiction rendered the investigation tainted and vitiated.
“observing that courts must resist instinctive reactions to the brutality of an offence and instead insist on proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” the bench said the prosecution had failed to meet its higher burden in such a grave case.
The High Court held that the investigation and prosecution were vitiated and that procedural irregularities had undermined the trial. It criticised the CBI’s handling of key aspects of the case, especially the process of turning witnesses into approvers and the filing of pardon-related applications before a court that, according to the High Court, lacked jurisdiction.
The High Court also observed that the investigative process involved coercion of witnesses and fabrication of records. It described the probe as “tainted” and “vitiated”. In the High Court’s view, the manner in which the investigation was conducted, and the reliance placed on that material by the trial court, made the convictions unsustainable.
As a result, the bench set aside the convictions and acquitted all surviving accused.
With the Supreme Court now stepping in, it has sought responses from the respondents and listed the matter for further hearing on May 19.
Case Title: Central Bureau of Investigation v. Jitha Kumar K.
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