Kerala Police, CBI in stand-off

Kochi, April 23 (IANS) A week after a deputy superintendent of police was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for conspiring to brutally beat up a journalist, the Kerala Police countered Monday by registering a case against the CBI for beating up the police officer.

The case has been registered by the Ernakulam North Police station and the accused include three top CBI officers who arrested Deputy Superintendent of Police N. Abdul Rasheed last week.

The new case comes as a counter to the case filed by the CBI officials at the same police station last week stating that Rasheed had prevented the CBI officials from doing their duty when they had gone to arrest him.

The attack on Kollam-based senior journalist V.B. Unnithan, working with Malayalam daily Mathrubhumi, took place in April last year. The Crime Branch police had then arrested a DSP Santhosh Nair but after that the investigation reached a dead end.

Under pressure from the journalist community, Chief Minister Oommen Chandy ordered a CBI probe and they closed down on Rasheed, who created a scene before and after he was arrested.

Since then, the relations between the Kochi unit of the CBI and Kerala Police have reached a low.

The new development comes at a time when the CBI was likely to pick up two more top Kerala Police officials who are believed to have played truant when the Crime Branch probed the attack on the journalist.

The relation between the CBI and Kerala Police first suffered a setback following the suicide of P.G. Haridath, a CBI officer, last month who in the suicide note had mentioned the names of two of his colleagues.

And when the Crime Branch took up the suicide case of Haridath, the CBI in a move to avert the arrest of two of their officials got both of them transferred in a jiffy.