The state government has decided to hand over the investigation into the 'unnatural death' of Malayalam actor Kalabhavan Mani to CBI after the Kerala Police failed to make any headway in the case even after a lapse of three months.
The State Police Chief Loknath Behra submitted a proposal for handing over the case to the central agency.
Mani's brother RLV Ramakrishnan had met Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan last week and requested him to leave the case to the CBI. The actor's family members had ruled out the possibility of a suicide and suspected that it must have been a murder. Ramakrishnan had said that the family lost hope in the current investigation that remains clueless.
"We are grateful to the government for taking a quick decision on our request," Ramakrishnan said in response to the news of CBI probe.
Mani,45, breathed his last at a hospital in Kochi on March 6, a day after he was admitted there in a serious condition. A slew of controversies followed the untimely death of the actor and putting some of his friends who were with him on the night before he was rushed to the hospital. The Kochi-based forensic lab found traces of a pesticide, complicating the whole thing. But a recent report by the Central Forensic Lab at Hyderabad revealed that no pesticide was found in the actor's body.
