Thiruvananthapuram: Days after news broke that a gang of accused in the T.P. Chandrasekharan murder case in Kerala were freely using mobile phones in the Kozhikode district jail, one mobile handset was found in the jail’s toilet today.
The finding comes just two days after the jail director general of police, Alexander Jacob, who was removed from his post on Friday, had appeared to defend the accused. The former jail DGP had said it had to be verified whether the accused had indeed used phones from within the jail premises.
The handset was found when maintenance staff set out to repair a blocked pipe of a toilet. However, the phone found was not a smartphone, and it is yet to be ascertained whether the Chandrasekharan murder accused had used this phone. Earlier, police had found phone chargers and the cover of a mobile handset.
While the allegation of murder accused prisoners accessing social media from the Kozhikode jail put the state government on the defensive, the Communist Party of India- Marxist (CPI-M) state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan visited Thamarassery bishop, Remigios Inchananiyil today.
This was the first interaction between the CPI-M leader and the Thamarassery bishop house, after he had referred to the former bishop as a “despicable” person.
Vijayan said the meeting with the bishop was to discuss issues pertaining to the Kasturirangan report on protection of the Western Ghats, and that no politics was discussed.
In another development of political consequence, the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee president Ramesh Chennithala demanded that the state government must order a probe into the sanction given for mining at Chakkittapara near Kozhikode.
The sanction for iron ore mining to a private company was given during the term of the previous Left Democratic Front government in 2009, and Chennithala expressed his annoyance that the government was delaying ordering a probe into the matter.
