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Kerala IAS officer gets bail in drink driving case as test rules out alcohol in blood
The report, and the bail evoked protests from friends and colleagues of K M Basheer (35), the slain journalist, who was riding a motorcycle that the car, driven by the IAS officer, ran over.
The granting of bail to an Indian Administrative Services officer arrested in an alleged drink driving case that resulted in the death of a journalist, has created a furore in Kerala and its capital Thiruvananthapuram, especially over charges that the blood test of the officer was delayed to help his case.
The chief judicial magistrate’s court in Thiruvananthapuram on Tuesday granted bail to Sriram Venkataraman, three days after his arrest. The granting of bail came after his blood test showed he was not under the influence of alcohol at the time.
The report, and the bail evoked protests from friends and colleagues of K M Basheer (35), the slain journalist, who was riding a motorcycle that the car, driven by the IAS officer, ran over.
They claimed the blood test was taken eight hours after the mishap, and that there were several other ways in which fellow bureaucrats of the Kerala cadre officer tried to help him.
The prosecution opposed the bail plea and sought police custody of the accused but the court said his medical report showed he wasn’t under the influence at the time of the accident as claimed and asked the prosecution to produce any other scientific proof to substantiate its claim.
The prosecution then offered accounts of witnesses but the court turned these down and granted bail to Venkataraman. The prosecution said it would appeal the decision.
According to the police, the IAS officer was under the influence of liquor as he drove the car carelessly and rammed into the motorcycle of the bureau chief of Malayalam daily Siraj, in the early hours of Saturday. Venkataraman was with a woman friend and he later told the police she was at the wheel. The friend denied this subsequently and said in a statement before a magistrate that he was driving the vehicle when the accident took place. Later the 33-year-old officer, who was appointed as the survey director by the state government last week, was arrested under Section 279 (rash driving on a public way) and 304 (punishment for culpable homicide not amounting to murder) of the Indian Penal Code.
“Police helped the accused in many ways. His blood samples and fingerprints were not taken immediately. We will not sit idle. We will hit the street till the deceased gets justice,” said Kerala Union of Working Journalists general secretary C Narayanan. Following the protests, the government constituted a special investigation team to probe the case.
Venkataraman became popular in the state following his crusade against land encroachers in hill station Munnar two years back during his stint as the Devikulam sub-collector. But the bureaucrat’s image has taken a severe beating after the mishap. In the 2013 civil service examination he was the second rank holder.
