Kottayam: One more witness has turned hostile in the sensational Kevin murder case. The latest is Ramshid, who is a friend of accused number nine Tittu Gerome.
With Ramshid, the number of hostile witnesses have turned six.
"Tittu is a friend for over four years. We had many conversations over phone before Kevin’s murder," he had told police.
However, yesterday in court, Ramshid said he cannot recollect any phone calls with Tittu.
The prosecution has, however, submitted proof of 111 calls between the two before Kevin’s death. When Ramshid repeated his statement, the prosecution termed him hostile.
However, Tittu’s relative Prince gave a statement favouring prosecution’s stance.
He is a supervisor at a mobile phone plant in Chennai. Tittu had worked under Prince for over a year. Tittu was using a phone number taken with Prince’s ID proof. It was taken for employees at the plant for official use.
Tittu had made several calls from this number, said Prince.
This card was lost on 20 May, 2018 and Tittu used another number for a while before taking a duplicate SIM, he told the court.
Witnesses -Sulaiman, Alan, Suneesh, Muneer and Ebin (Umesh)- had turned hostile earlier.
Recently, Rajesh, witness number 37 in the Kevin case, who was reportedly on his way to Kottayam to depose during the ongoing trial, was assaulted by two accused in their bid to force him to change his statement in court. The bail for these two accused - Manu Muraleedharan and Shinu Nasser- was consequently cancelled by the court.
Kevin P Joseph, a 23-year-old Dalit Christian youth, was brutally killed on May 27, 2018 by a gang led by Sanu, the eldest brother of his fiancee Neenu. He had earned the wrath of Neenu's family for going ahead with plans to marry her despite the objection posed by her parents and brother.
The Kevin murder trial which began in February is expected to be completed in six months as it comes under the category of honour killing.
