New Delhi: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) invited the wrath of the Supreme Court when the agency said it had not started investigation into the circumstances that led to the suicide of an engineering student in Kerala because it was yet to get an official communication from the state government. The court said it would not hesitate to order a probe if the CBI did not.
The Kerala police had come under fire for the way they handled the suicide of Jishnu Pranoy in a hostel room attached to the Pampady Nehru College near Thrissur on January 6. Though the boy's relatives had accused the college management and teachers of abetting the suicide, the police waited for 41 days to register a case against five persons including Nehru group chairman P. Krishna Das and vice principal N.K. Sakthivel.
Krishna Das and a few teachers had accused Pranoy of cheating in the exam and tortured him, his relatives had said. He was bleeding from his lips when he returned from the office of public relations officer Sanjith, where he was summoned to after the exam, the family said.
Apart from Krishna Das, Sakthivel and Sanjith, the police have pressed charges against two assistant professors, C.P. Praveen and Dipin.
The Supreme Court had asked the Kerala government and the CBI to submit progress reports on the investigations into Pranoy's suicide and the torture of another student, Shaheer Shoukath Ali. The court will take up the case on Tuesday.
