A fresh petition was filed at the CJM court in Kollam on Tuesday asking for the direct supervision of the court into the investigation of the firing and progress on the probe made by the special investigation team (SIT) that is looking after the case of firing by Italian marines that took the lives of two fishermen.
“More facts were collected with regard to the case from the captain and so we decided to submit a fresh petition before the CJM.
The captain is the supreme authority in a ship, without his concern nothing can happen inside the vessel,” said Adv. Sreenivas Venugopal, Kerala state secretary, AIDMK, to Deccan Chronicle.
“After the firing incident, the captain even took the vessel from our territorial waters into international waters on the high seas which clearly indicate that he was aware about the firing. SIT could not locate the black box from the ship which is of vital evidence in the case.
But the court will obtain a report on the progress of the investigation from SIT and will seek the possibility of including the captain in the list of the accused,” he added.
Earlier, he withdrew the criminal miscellaneous petition he had filed on February 25 at the first class magistrate court I in Kollam accusing Umberto Vitelli, captain of the Italian vessel, Enrica Lexie, of firing on two fishermen on February 15.
The hearing will be held in the presence of chief judicial magistrate A.K. Gopakumar on March 8.