KOCHI:
A team of scuba divers on Monday afternoon jumped into the backwaters, near here with the objective of trying to retrieve a hard disk of the incident that took place at a hotel DJ party, following which two former beauty pageant winners left the hotel and were killed in a car crash, soon after.
The divers are attached to the Fire and Rescue Unit of the state government and those who know the backwaters will say that this is going to be a futile attempt, as it’s been more than two weeks, since the hard disk was thrown into the waters.
The incident occurred in the wee hours of November 1 and had it not been for sustained media coverage, this might not be just a car crash, the scene today is the police is now trying to unravel if there was anything foul in this case.
Under pressure, the state government has now appointed a fresh team and the Kerala police has also appealed against the bail granted to the staff and owner of the hotel where the DJ party was held prior to the car crash.
However things started to take a turn after Roy J. Vayalatin, the hotel owner, and five of his staff members were arrested on Wednesday night, but were granted bail the following night.
This came, even when the staff of Vayalatin had informed the police that the hard disk was thrown into the backwaters.
And a miffed police in the remand report, expressed doubts whether drugs played a role in the incident. The involvement of blackmailing also needed to be probed, it said.
Vayalatin was arrested after he told the police that the CCTV hard disk which contained the visuals of the party has been destroyed.
Models Ancy Kabeer, 25, and Anjana Shajan, 24, had died instantly in the crash, while a third person – Ashiq, succumbed to his injuries a few days later, leaving Abdul Rahman, who drove the car, the only witness.
Rahman is presently out of hospital but the police have arrested him under charges of ‘involuntary manslaughter’.
Though the probe team recovered the hard disk of the CCTV footage at the hotel, it failed to get any visuals of the party, raising suspicion of a foul play.
After several days of probe, the police team learnt that there was an altercation during the party. Before things could take an ugly turn, the youngsters had left the hotel.
According to sources, Rahman was driving under the influence of alcohol.
It was on their way back that the car, after hitting a two-wheeler, lost control and turned turtle.
