CBI rules out accident in school teacher's case

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Almost two years after school teacher Krishna Kumar was badly injured and the Kerala Police concluded it was an accident, the CBI which took up the case has differed and termed it an attack - which the victim's family has been saying from day one.

"I am very happy to hear that the CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) has dismissed the findings of the Kerala police that my husband came under attack and it was not an accident as claimed by police," Krishna Kumar's wife Geetha Krishnakumar told the media.

Krishna Kumar was found severely injured near Kottarakara Sep 27, 2011, some 70 km from here, around 10.45 p.m. The highway police first took him to a hospital but he was later moved to the Medical College Hospital here as his condition worsened.

It was initially said that Kumar's rectum was pierced with an iron rod, his genitals crushed and his hips smashed.

However, a medical board report concluded the injuries might have been caused by a vehicle accident and that neither was his rectum pierced by a rod nor were his genitals crushed.

The case raged in the state at the time as Krishna Kumar and his wife taught at a school owned by R. Balakrishna Pillai, a senior ruling front leader and father of then forest minister K.B. Ganesh Kumar.

The issue became a keenly debated subject both inside and outside the floor of the assembly and the Left opposition indirectly alleged influential persons had plotted the attack.

At the time of the attack, Pillai was cooling his heels in a jail here as he was convicted in a corruption case.

After hearing the CBI findings, legislator Ayisha Potty, who defeated Pillai in the 2006 assembly polls, told the media that all who followed the sequence of events knew that it was never an accident at all.

"No scientific investigation was done on how and what had happened to Krishna Kumar and the CBI's findings clearly shows that some 'bigwigs' are behind this episode," said Potty.

Sources close to CBI point out they would go ahead to conduct a lie detector test on a few people who are aware of what happened in this episode. The CBI had called in 50 people connected with the incidents and after a scientific probe concluded it was not an accident.