Fourteen years without answers: Kerala High Court orders CBI probe into a soldier's disappearance

KOCHI — On 3 April 2012, Balan P.K. stood at Ernakulam railway station and waved his son off. The next day, an unfamiliar mobile number called: it was his son, saying the train had reached Visakhapatnam and he was not feeling well. That was the last the family ever heard from him. On 10 April, the Commandant of the Tripura State Rifles told Balan that Subash Chandra Bose had not reported back after his leave period. The soldier had vanished from a train between Visakhapatnam and Guwahati. Fourteen years later, the Kerala High Court has ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation to take over the probe. A single bench of Justice G. Girish passed the order on a writ petition the father filed back in October 2012 (W.P(C) No. 25341/2012), represented by advocate Sooraj T. Elenjickal. The record of the case is a chronicle of institutional shrugging. Balan lodged complaints with the Sub Inspector of Police at the Railway Police Station in Ernakulam and knocked on the doors of various authorities. The High Court directed the District Superintendent of Police to get details from the Railway Police at Visakhapatnam; that police force expressed helplessness and finally closed the investigation as "undetected". Fourteen years of official effort ended with the file shut. Justice Girish was not persuaded by any of the resistance. The CBI opposed the transfer, arguing the court lacked territorial jurisdiction and that there was only a very rare possibility of tracing the missing man after 14 years. The court rejected both: an offence committed in the course of a journey can be enquired into where the traveller passed, and the court said it could not "shut its doors" on a father seeking a CBI probe as a last resort. The golden hours in a missing-person case are 48 to 72, the judge acknowledged — but the civil society owed a responsibility to stand by a soldier in a personal crisis, and a premier agency was not expected to take a pessimistic view. The State government itself told the court it had no objection to the transfer. The court has ordered the State Police Chiefs of Kerala and Andhra Pradesh to transmit all investigation records to the CBI officer entrusted with the case. For Balan P.K., it is the first real chance at answers since that call from an unknown number in April 2012. The uncomfortable question the order forces onto the record is why it took fourteen years — and a High Court judgment — for the system to admit that its own investigation had produced nothing.