CBI pulled up for tardy probe

CHENNAI: The Madras High Court on Tuesday pulled up the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for tardy probe into the Sathish Kumar murder case.A bench comprising justices C Nagappan and P R Shivakumar, while hearing the arguments, observed: “Why you (CBI) are not able to crack the case… which shows either inefficiency or your unwillingness to crack it.”Sathish Kumar (24), a law student, was the son of advocate R Sankara Subhu. Kumar was reported missing on June 7, and a week later his body was fished out from a lake near ICF. Sankara Subhu had filed a petition in the Madras High Court seeking justice.In a counter affidavit filed by CBI on Tuesday, the agency contended that the documents collected from the local police were scrutinised and investigation conducted on the discrepancies about the recovery of material object from the dead body by collecting the original rough notes of postmortem and connected forwarding notes of local police from Dr V Murugesan, head of the department, Forensic Science Department of Kilpauk Medical College.Three officers -  inspector of police N Suresh Babu, inspector of police Md Nazar and special sub-inspector of V5 Tirumangalam police station Md Yusuf - and Dr Bardhan, scientific officer of the Mobile Forensic Science Laboratory, Chennai were interrogated in connection with the case, the counter affidavit said. The CBI also filed a status report on the case in a sealed cover.Meanwhile, Sankara Subhu filed a interim direction petition on Tuesday and sought the custodial interrogation of Suresh Babu.Sankara Subhu, in his petition, submitted that from the beginning, Suresh Babu had been lethargic in handling the case.After hearing the arguments, the court posted the matter to August 3.