The acquittal of all the accused in the Thamarassery Forest office arson case has cast doubts on the efficacy of the probe conducted by the local police and the District Crime Branch into the incident in which government property worth ₹77 lakh was left vandalised during a protest against the Kasturirangan panel report in 2013.
The argument of the defence counsel that none of the arrested were part of the crime was approved by the trial court in the absence of strong evidence and eyewitnesses’ accounts to prove the charges.
Though the Kozhikode Special Additional Sessions Court (Marad cases) examined 29 witnesses in the case, a majority of them turned hostile during the trial period. A major setback for the prosecution was the declaration of three key witnesses, Forest Range Officer T.S. Saju, Beat Forest Officer Subrahmanyan and Civil Police Officer Suresh, as hostile. None of the witnesses identified the accused.
The main argument raised by the defendants’ counsel during the in-camera proceedings was that the majority of the arrested were rural farmers who had reached the spot to enquire about the details. According to the defendants’ counsel, the plight of farmers dragged into a 10-year-long legal battle was a matter of grave concern. There were also persons who were allegedly arrested by the police while they were on the way to a hospital with a patient in need of emergency treatment.
With the acquittal of all the 34 accused, the laxity on the part of the investigators in exposing the real attackers is being questioned. Several vehicles were vandalised by the attackers who set afire Forest office buildings and attacked officers and mediapersons. Several office files were gutted in the incident. A KSRTC bus was also damaged during the clash, that pushed the village to the brink of a riot-like situation.
The police have also been blamed for the missing of the case diary, considered one of the comprehensive investigation reports to support the trial. The reasons behind the missing of the case diary, which affected the prosecution during the trial period, remained unknown even after the declaration of an investigation by the Forest Minister.
After the case diary went missing, the prosecution had to depend on certified copies of various key documents such as scene mahazar and statements of the witnesses obtained from the court. Though a few police officers associated with the case came up with the argument that the case diary had been handed over to the office of the Public Prosecutor in 2017, it was denied by the Additional Public Prosecutor.
