CBI takes over case of Kerala fusion musician's death shrouded in mystery

After two close aides of late musician Balabhaskar were found to have associations with an international gold smuggling racket, the musician's death by accident is now under question. On Wednesday, CBI took over the case and registered a fresh FIR.

Balabhaskar, a noted fusion musician from Kerala, and his daughter died in a road accident in the wee hours of the morning on September 25, 2018, in Thiruvananthapuram.

Balabhaskar, known for his expertise with the violin, and his two-year-old daughter Thejaswani Bala were killed and his wife Lakshmi and driver Arjun suffered serious injuries after the car in which they were travelling rammed into a tree at Pallippuram, about 15 kilometres from the city.

Prima facie, it looked like an accidental death caused due to the driver's drowsiness. However, Balabhaskar's father C K Unni has been raising suspicions from the initial stages. He also sought a probe into the financial investments of his son.

Even as the police investigation pointed towards the driver's drowsiness as the cause of the accident, there were contradictory statements over whether Balabhaskar or Arjun drove the car. Kerala Police's crime branch that probed the case reportedly came to the conclusion that Arjun was driving at the time of the mishap, even though some residents near the accident spot maintained that Balabhaskar was on the driving seat at the time of the accident.

The mystery over the musician's death later deepened as his friends Vishnu S and Prakash Thampi, who used to manage his programmes within the country and abroad, were arraigned by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) in the gold smuggling case. The seizure of 25 kilogram gold at the Thiruvananthapuram airport led to busting the racket.

Adding to the mystery over Balabhaskar's death, an artist in Kerala, Kalabahavan Shobi, later claimed that he happened to pass by Balabhaskar's accident spot at that time and noticed two persons moving away from the spot.

Police sources said that they were not ruling out the possibility that Balabhaskar's aides may have been using him and his travels abroad as a cover for smuggling, without his knowledge.

The Kerala Government sought a CBI probe into the incident at the request of Balabhaskar's father.

CBI Thiruvananthapuram unit DySP Ananthakrishna T P will be probing the case under the supervision of SP Nandakumar Nair.