Thrissur: The police personnel probing the unnatural death of Kalabhavan Mani went into a huddle with the members of a medical board formed to help the police untangle the mystery. Director General of Police T P Senkumar, Health Department Director Dr R Ramesh and the doctors who treated the actor and the doctors who conducted a post-mortem on his body also attended the discussions that extended late into Friday night.
Mani's death puts focus on Kerala's creaky crime labs system
The high-level meeting was called for in the backdrop of allegations that the probe was not proceeding in the right directions even a month after the actor died in a hospital in Kochi. The police probe has hit a wall after two forensic examinations presented conflicting reports about the cause of Mani’s death.
Crime Branch Superintendent of Police P N Unni Raja, Deputy Superintendent of Police K S Sudarshan and Circle Inspector Crispin Sam represented the police team in the discussions.
The police are awaiting a report from the Central Forensic Science Laboratory in Hyderabad, where Mani’s viscera and blood samples were sent for a re-examination. It will take at least three more weeks to get the report, which is expected to shed light on the cause of Mani’s death.
The samples were earlier tested in the Regional Analytical Laboratory in Kakkanad but the results were in contrast to the initial tests done in the Amrita Institute of Medical Science in Kochi, where Mani was admitted in a serious condition on March 5. The government lab found the presence of a pesticide in the actor’s body but could not confirm that the pesticide was the cause of death.
The presence of the pesticide was not detected in the hospital where Mani was treated or during the post-mortem conducted in the Thrissur Medical College.
The police team probing Mani’s death has questioned about 300 people so far but it has not come across any evidence suggesting that the actor had committed suicide or was murdered. Even the Regional Analytical Laboratory report pointed to liver disease as a cause of death as it could not assess the amount of pesticide in the body.