The police have secured the hard disk of the CCTV camera system at the Kozhikode Medical College Hospital (MCH) where three security guards and a journalist were allegedly manhandled by a gang of Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) and Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] activists. The effort is to retrieve original visuals of the attack to be submitted as evidence in court.
There were allegations against the police that they were showing laxity in collecting original visuals to weaken the case. The measures taken so far were based on screen grabs of CCTV visuals. Mobile phone camera recordings were also used as proof to identify suspects.
Police sources said the hard disk would be sent for digital forensic analysis with the permission of the court. They refused to comment on allegations that there was a “deliberate delay” on the part of the investigation team in collecting the disk.
Eyewitnesses had claimed that the police had delayed recovery of the hard disk as part of the alleged attempt to facilitate overwriting of existing data with new visuals. They also expressed doubts over the recovery of original visuals of the incident after a two-week break.
