Nearly eight months after his demise in a road accident in Thiruvananthapuram, Balabhaskar's death remains to be shrouded in mystery.
Investigations into the celebrity violinist's death is now focused on a complex web of claims, counter claims and suspicious links. Though many media reports claimed that forensic report has confirmed that it was Balabhaskar's friend Arjun who was driving the car on the ill fated day in September 2018, Deputy Superintendent of Police Harikrishnan, who is leading the probe told TNM that this was not true. The police were still awaiting the forensic report.
Here is a brief time line of the developments in the case right from September 2018, when the car crash happened.
Accident
On the morning of September 25, 2018, Balabhaskar's car skid off the road and crashed into a tree in Pallipuram in Thiruvananthapuram as the family and Arjun were returning from Thrissur.
While his two year old daughter Tejasvini Bala died on the spot, Balabhaskar and his wife Lekshmi were critical and hospitalised. Arjun was also hospitalised with injuries on his leg.
According to their family members, the group was returning to Thiruvananthapuram after visiting the Guruvayur temple.
Balabhaskar dies
After a week long battle in the ICU, 40-year-old Balabhaskar passed away in Ananthapuri hospital in Thiruvananthapuram. The accident had dislocated his neck, ruptured his lungs and fractured his limbs.
The violinist died after a massive cardiac arrest and multiple organ failure on October 2, 2018, despite doctors performing surgeries on his neck.
The accident's only survivors are Lakshmi and Arjun.
First signs of trouble
Trouble began a month after the accident in November, when statements by Lakshmi and the driver Arjun to the investigating officers were at odds with each other.
While Lekshmi claimed that it was Arjun at the wheel with Balabhaskar occupying the rear seat, Arjun said that they had a pitstop in Kollam when he shifted to the back seat and Balabhaskar took over the wheel.
Several eye-witnesses who were questioned had also given conflicting statements on who had been driving when the car crashed.
Balabhaskar's father approaches DGP
End of November, Balabhaskar's father CK Unni approached Kerala Police Chief Loknath Behera, requesting for the Crime Branch to probe his son's death.
In a letter to Behera, Unni raised suspicions over an investment that Balabhaskar had made at the behest of Arjun. He also wanted to know why the family, which had booked a hotel room to stay overnight in Guruvayur, returned hurriedly to Thiruvananthapuram.
The father even named the Poonthottam Ayurveda Asharam in Palakkad and alleged that Balabhaskar had paid its founders a lot of money, which was never returned.
When TNM's Korah Abraham spoke to Unni in June, he claimed that Balabhaskar's was an 'engineered death'.
Unni alleged that the Attingal police (which was investigating the case before the Crime Branch took over) was going in the wrong direction and that they had not questioned family members. This prompted Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan to intervene and ask for the Crime Branch to take over.
Gold smuggling accused questioned
Cut to June 1, 2019, a major development in the case further thickened the plot. Two persons accused of gold smuggling were questioned by the Crime Branch over Balabhaskar's accident.
The two men were identified as Vishnu and Prakash Thampi. They were first arrested by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) for a gold smuggling case. However, when it was found that the two knew Balabhaskar, the Crime Branch decided to question them to rule out any links.
The two accused were questioned as part of a separate probe. According to reports, both of them had known Balabhaskar, with one having worked as his program co-ordinator and the other having handled his finances.
Following this development, Lekshmi had posted on Facebook that the two men had nothing to do with her late husband and requested people to not drag his name into such controversies.
However, after reports confirmed that the two men knew Balabhaskar well, Lakshmi denied having posted the status on Facebook.
Soby George's statements
A week after this development, statements by sound recording artist Soby George made headlines as the new twist in Balabhaskar's death mystery.
According to reports, Soby had told Crime Branch officers that he had seen two suspicious looking men at the accident scene minutes after the mishap had taken place. Soby had reached the site within 10 minutes on September 25.
He claims that he had seen one man attempting to run away from the scene while another man pushing a bike where the accident had taken place. He also claimed that he had told Prakash Thampi on what he had seen, but the latter refused to believe him.
Meanwhile, reports say that Thampi approached a shop in Kollam and took away their CCTV visuals. It was at this juice shop in Kollam that Balabhaskar and others had stopped during the journey. Crime Branch also believes that Arjun who had been discharged from the hospital, had fled to some place in east India.