Mangaluru: A year since Rohit’s death - Investigation yet to progress

- Media Release

Mangaluru, 22 Mar 2015: It has been a year since the headless body of Rohit Radhakrishnan (22) was found near the beach road towards Tannir Bavi on the fateful morning of 23 March 2014. The tears of his parents Dr Sreedevi and advocate Radhakrishnan have not dried. Nightmares are hounding them and his dear and near every night and day.

 

Dr Sreedevi who is a practicing pediatrician working at Bahrain at the time, could not bear the loss of her son, is back home at Kuzhikkala Pathanamthitta, working with a hospital nearby and his father advocate Radhakrishnan is trying to bury his sorrows in his profession. But it has not been easy as they lost their one and only child. Who could help them go get over with their sorrow, and grief? The fact is none - All friends and relatives could do was advise philosophy and may be sympathies on the loss.

 

 

The sad part is that, there is no support from any of the so-called democratic machinery. After discovering the mutilated body on the roadside, the basic action taken by the responsible was to cover-up the incident by trying to write it off as a freak accident!

 

It was close relatives with the support of the media who made hue and cry to open the case again and relook into it. If one looks at the recent death of the IAS officer D K Ravi, one can observe many similarities in the case. Here also authorities are writing it off as a suicide without any proof or evidence. After the public agitation only they are taking little steps, even to investigate the case. In the case of Rohit Radhakrishnan, it is going in the same direction, say the family. "Initially the police was trying to close the case declaring and registering case as an accident. Later CB-CID was declared, which as an eye wash to pacify agitating parents and the public. What is the result of that enquiry? Where does it stand? No one knows," the family say.

 

"All these mockeries are only to divert attention of the public as well as the media from the issue and then divert the case as they wanted and to close it discreetly. When the case been thrown in the dustbin there won’t be any convincing explanation as it would be done out of the media glare," they say.

 

The family claims that there was hard effort from the investigation team to prove that it is an accident. But the team never answered the questions being raised challenging the observation and conclusions made by the police or investigating team, they say.

 

In a media release, the family questions, "If something happens in this world, there should be a reason, explanation and a scientific briefing to justify that incident. If all available enquiries made are not providing a convincing answer for the accident theory, then what should be the conclusion. ’Murder’! Nothing other than that. To look for a culprit, first the conclusion should be made on the cause of death. Unfortunately, only effort being made by the investigators are to trying to fabricate evidence to prove that Rohit’s death was due to an accident."

 

"We do not trust or believe in the line of investigation that is in progress. There should be a convincing reply answer for the questions being raised during the death and enquiry process," the release states.

 

"Knowing the real cause of death is the fundamental right of the parents and the society. If it is not happening, the very basic philosophy of the society itself will be questioned," it states.

 

Some of the questions raised by the family in the media release:

- Even after one year of the incident why the accident theory could not be established?
- Why the investigators are not looking at the murder angle, when there are glaring evidences pointing to murder.
- Why the autopsy was conducted not by a police surgeon?
- Why embalming was done without the consent of immediate relatives?
- Why the video tape (mandatory) of the autopsy is missing?
- Why the conflicting statements of his friends who were with him till the last moment were (not) investigated further?
- Why the police tried to hush-up the case declaring as a freak accident?
- Why there was a inordinate delay in even declaring a CB CID enquiry?
- What was the outcome of that enquiry even after one year?
- Why they have not questioned the local people who had identified the body and still believe it as a murder?
- Will there be any justice at the end for the devastated parents and the relatives?