On July 24, two policemen were given death sentence and three were given three-year imprisonment by the Thiruvananthapuram special CBI court on the grounds of a custodial death that happened in 2005.
It was finally the victory of a 67 year old mother named Prabhavati Amma, after a long wait and fight of thirteen years.
Prabhavati always led a struggling life as a single-mother and brought up her son Udayakumar by doing menial jobs such as serving as a domestic help in houses. Udayakumar was a dump collector and used to contribute in the household expenses to help his mother.
On September 27, 2015, Uday went out of his house to buy a dress for Prabhavati for Onam. On the way, he and his friend Suresh were picked up by the Fort Police in Thiruvananthapuram on the suspicion of theft along with his friend. While searching, the police officials found Rs. 4000 with Udayakumar.
The cops kept the money inspite of being told repeatedly that the money belonged to Uday and told him to go back. But for Uday, the money was extremely important, so he insisted on taking it back. As fate would have it, Udayakumar was taken under custody and brutally tortured by the cops that included third-degree torture.
He was given the punishment of rolling which meant that the person is tied to a table and his entire body is pressed with wooden sticks or iron rods. The cops used a steel pipe and rolled it in his thighs. On being taken to the hospital, Uday was declared dead.
It was then that Prabhavati took the legal path and decided to get justice for her son no matter what and after a long wait of 13 years, she finally won the case and got the accused to pay for their crime.
Among the accused were K Jithakumar and SV Sreekumar and both of them were sentenced to death, and the remaining three were TK Haridas, EK Sabu, and Ajit Kumar who have been given three-year imprisonment on the grounds of hiding the evidences. There was also a sixth guilty constable who died during his trial.