A hearing scheduled at the Pathanamthitta Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM) Court on July 24 will mark a milestone in the life of K.C. Prabhakaran Pillai, a retired executive officer of the Pathanamthitta District Cooperative Bank.
Around 30 years ago when the case first came up for a hearing at the same court, he had stood as the lone accused in the case. Life has come a full circle and he now stands as a witness in the same case.
The life of Mr. Pillai, a clerk-cum-cashier in the bank, took a turn for the worse on June, 30, 1994, when 36.5 sovereigns of gold pledged by the public in the bank went missing. He had gone on leave three days before the incident, after handing over the cash book and gold stock register to a colleague.
The police immediately took him into custody. After subjecting him to inhuman torture for about nine days, the police took Mr. Pillai to his wife’s house in the guise of evidence collection. “The police party led by Circle Inspector R. Ramachandran Nair threatened my wife, her three sisters and mother with dire consequences unless the ornaments were recovered. Later, at his instance, my wife, three-year-old daughter, and in-laws, gave their ornaments, weighing around 40.75 sovereigns, to the police besides a blank signed cheque and few other documents,” recalled Mr. Pillai.
The next day, he was produced in the court with an ingot weighing around 36.5 sovereigns along with a confession from Mohanan Achari, a goldsmith from Kayamkulam. The court remanded him for 14 days.
Twist in the case
The case, however, turned on its head when the bank launched an internal inquiry into a cheque forgery a year later. Koshy P. Cherian, a peon at the bank, confessed to the gold theft and the cheque forgery. The development left the police red-faced and they initially sat on this new revelation. But after a public outcry, they recovered the booty – one portion reportedly from Koshy’s house and the remaining from a goldsmith.
The police still retained Mr. Pillai as the first accused, alleging a link between him and Koshy. Mr. Pillai approached the Chief Minister, who directed the Vigilance and Anti Corruption Bureau (VACB) to probe the case. He was given a clean chit.
Moving High Court
The police, however, proceeded with their case, which prompted Mr. Pillai to approach the High Court. Four years later, in 2000, then High Court judge T.M. Hassan Pillai revoked the police case. Soon after, he also got back the gold taken from of his family. When he subjected the 36.5-sovereign ingot to a purity test, it was found to contain around nine sovereigns of copper. The purity of the remaining gold was below 14 carats – which meant a cumulative loss of around 13.5 sovereigns.
Sensing danger, the police challenged the High Court order in the Supreme Court, which, in turn, referred the case back to the trial court. In 2016, then High Court judge B. Kemal Pasha ordered a Crime Branch probe, directing the agency to submit a report in one month. In 2018, Crime Branch Dy.SP Sudhakaran Pillai probed the case and submitted a chargesheet acquitting him of all the charges, which was later upheld by the court in 2021.
The extra mile
Yet, Mr. Pillai was arraigned as a witness in the case, further prolonging his wait for justice. Despite ill health, brought forth by prolonged court battles and mental trauma, Mr. Pillai is unfazed and ready to go the extra mile. Among the police officers who falsely implicated him in the case, only Mr. Ramachandran Nair is alive.
“I‘ll get justice only when the police officer who falsely implicated me in the case and fabricated evidence, the goldsmith who submitted a false statement, and another witness who gave false statements, are punished,” he says.
(With inputs from Hiran Unnikrishnan, Kottayam)
