Days after the CBI agreed to probe the 2014 death of Sreejeev in police custody, the investigating agency will register the FIR in the case on Wednesday.
According to media reports, the CBI’s Thiruvananthapuram unit will register the FIR.
Sreejeev’s brother Sreejith has been protesting for the 775 days in front of the Kerala Secretariat demanding a CBI probe into the case. Even as the agency finally agreed to investigate his brother’s death on January 19, Sreejith continues his protest, reiterating his stand on Tuesday that he would end it only once there is clarity about the probe.
Following a petition filed by Sreejeev’s mother Remani, the CBI told the Kerala High Court that it has taken over the case. On January 16 Remani had moved the High Court demanding a CBI probe.
After the central agency agreed to look into Sreejeev’s death last week, representatives of the Chief Minister’s office reached out to Sreejith the same day and handed over the notification pertaining to CBI taking over the case.
Sreejith, however, maintained that his protest would end after the CBI began its probe. His decision not to call off the protest comes from the fact that the agency had earlier in January informed the state government that it could not probe Sreejeev’s death as it did not fall under the rarest of rare category.
Sreejeev was taken into custody by the Parassala police in May 2014 after being accused of theft.
Days later, Sreejeev died in a hospital. While police officials maintain that Sreejeev consumed poison, his family accused the officers of murder and cited custodial torture as the reason for his death.
In 2016, the Police Complaint Authority investigation found that the death was caused by custodial torture and the police version was concluded as false.
In September 2016, the Kerala government asked the Director General of Police to hand over the probe to a Special Investigations Team (SIT). While Sreejith and his family were granted a compensation of Rs 10 lakh by the government, they continued to demand that the police officers responsible for Sreejeev’s death be suspended.
Even as Sreejith continued his over two-year long protest, in November 2017, he was informed by the Home Department of a CBI inquiry. But the Kerala government later received a letter from the CBI citing that Sreejeev’s death not being the ‘rarest of rare’ did not warrant an investigation by the central agency.
Sreejith’s protest for his brother stirred Kerala society, with a number of actors including Nivin Pauly, Tovino Thomas, Parvathy, Prithiviraj among others demanding justice. A parallel social media campaign also gathered storm, culminating in a protest in solidarity for Sreejith on January 14.
A day later, Chief Minster Pinarayi Vijayan met Sreejith and Remani and promised that the state would write again to the Centre seeking a CBI probe.