After 30 years of court battle, his wait for justice continues

Retired exec. Pillai, falsely implicated in gold theft case 30 yrs ago, now stands as witness. After inhuman torture & false evidence, Pillai was acquitted by court in 2021.

A hearing scheduled at the Pathanamthitta Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM) Court on July 24 will mark a milestone in the life of K.C. Prabhakaran Pillai, a retired executive officer of the Pathanamthitta District Cooperative Bank.

Around 30 years ago when the case first came up for a hearing at the same court, he had stood as the lone accused in the case. Life has come a full circle and he now stands as a witness in the same case.

The life of Mr. Pillai, a clerk-cum-cashier in the bank, took a turn for the worse on June, 30, 1994, when 36.5 sovereigns of gold pledged by the public in the bank went missing. He had gone on leave three days before the incident, after handing over the cash book and gold stock register to a colleague.

The police immediately took him into custody. After subjecting him to inhuman torture for about nine days, the police took Mr. Pillai to his wife’s house in the guise of evidence collection. “The police party led by Circle Inspector R. Ramachandran Nair threatened my wife, her three sisters and mother with dire consequences unless the ornaments were recovered. Later, at his instance, my wife, three-year-old daughter, and in-laws, gave their ornaments, weighing around 40.75 sovereigns, to the police besides a blank signed cheque and few other documents,” recalled Mr. Pillai. 

The next day, he was produced in the court with an ingot weighing around 36.5 sovereigns along with a confession from Mohanan Achari, a goldsmith from Kayamkulam. The court remanded him for 14 days.

The case, however, turned on its head when the bank launched an internal inquiry into a cheque forgery a year later. Koshy P. Cherian, a peon at the bank, confessed to the gold theft and the cheque forgery. The development left the police red-faced and they initially sat on this new revelation. But after a public outcry, they recovered the booty – one portion reportedly from Koshy’s house and the remaining from a goldsmith.

The police still retained Mr. Pillai as the first accused, alleging a link between him and Koshy. Mr. Pillai approached the Chief Minister, who directed the Vigilance and Anti Corruption Bureau (VACB) to probe the case. He was given a clean chit.