The Crime Branch wing of the Kerala police, which is probing the death of three people, including two models, in a car accident on November 1, on Tuesday confirmed that the arrested interior designer Saiju Thankachen is a drug user. "He is a habitual drug user and it has also been proved from his previous dealings. We will register cases if there are complaints against him and we are also seeing if we can register a suo motu case," Kochi Commissioner of Police CH Nagaraju said while speaking to the media.
Ever since Thankachen's arrest, the police have been able to unravel a few things and his mobile phone appeared to be the biggest source of evidence. According to sources, the police team after interrogating Thankachen has more or less concluded that the reason for the accident was a car chase which involved Thankachen, who rushed out from a hotel where a DJ party was held and followed the two models who were also present at the party.
Ansi Kabeer, 25, and Anjana Shajan, 24, had died instantly in the crash on November 1. While the third passenger succumbed to his injuries a few days later, the driver escaped with injuries. However, the driver was later arrested by the police team.
The case, which would have been passed off as an accident case, took a turn when the police found that the CCTV visuals from the hotel where the DJ party took place had gone missing. Later, the police arrested the owner of the hotel, Roy J Vayalat, and five of his staff members on the grounds that the visuals were destroyed, but in 24 hours all of them were out on bail.
Even though the police made three attempts to recover the hard disk, which the owner said was thrown into the nearby backwaters, it could not be retrieved. As per the investigation, Thankachen had called Vayalat minutes after the accident took place.