New Delhi: The CBI has taken over the probe into the death of 20-year-old veterinary student Sidharthan JS, whose body was found hanging inside the bathroom of the college hostel in Wayanad district on February 18, officials said.
Sidharthan was subjected to ragging by fellow students, including activists of CPI-M’s students’ outfit SFI, his family had alleged demanding a CBI inquiry.
The agency has re-registered the FIR filed at the Vythiri police station in Waynad against 20 people late Friday night, within hours of receiving a notification from the central government in this connection.
The accused have been booked under IPC sections related to criminal conspiracy, abetment to suicide, wrongful restraint, voluntarily causing hurt and Kerala’s anti-ragging law.
A CBI team will visit the state soon with a forensics team, the officials said.
According to the procedure, the CBI starts a probe in such state-referred cases by re-registering the FIR of local police. The findings which are submitted in the form of a final report to a court after the completion of the probe can be completely different from the allegations in the FIR.
Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had assured a CBI probe on March 9 after political uproar. The issue later snowballed into a political controversy with the opposition Congress and the BJP alleging the government was yet to hand over necessary files to the CBI weeks after the assurance.
The Kerala government had recently suspended three employees of the Home Department alleging “dereliction and unresponsiveness” in handing over documents and details to the Central Bureau of Investigation with regard to the investigation.
Besides the opposition, the deceased student’s family also came out against the government, alleging that the government was deliberately trying to delay the CBI probe by not handing them over the necessary files and destroying the evidence.
Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the NDA candidate for the Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha seat, had assured the student’s family to expedite the launch of the CBI investigation into the death.
The Congress-led UDF had also accused the Left government in Kerala and the police of trying to save those responsible for the death of a student of the state-run College of Veterinary and Animal Sciences in Wayanad by delaying the transfer of the case to the CBI.
The victim’s father, Jayaprakash, has alleged that his son was being harassed for eight months before his death, according to a news report.
He also claimed various senior SFI leaders were “camping” at the college for several months and his son was allegedly made to strip and sit on his knees.
“They were all aware of what was going on. They could have put an end to it back then. I cannot believe that the senior SFI leaders were unaware of what was happening there,” he said.
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