The acquittal of all the accused in the Thamarassery Forest office arson case has cast doubts on the efficacy of the probe conducted by the local police and the District Crime Branch into the incident in which government property worth ₹77 lakh was left vandalised during a protest against the Kasturirangan panel report in 2013.
The argument of the defence counsel that none of the arrested were part of the crime was approved by the trial court in the absence of strong evidence and eyewitnesses’ accounts to prove the charges.
Though the Kozhikode Special Additional Sessions Court (Marad cases) examined 29 witnesses in the case, a majority of them turned hostile during the trial period. A major setback for the prosecution was the declaration of three key witnesses, Forest Range Officer T.S. Saju, Beat Forest Officer Subrahmanyan and Civil Police Officer Suresh, as hostile. None of the witnesses identified the accused.
