The sensational Kochi cocaine case has fallen into a controversy after analyses of blood samples taken from the accused tested negative for the drug even as a Kochi court on Friday rejected the bail pleas of three of the five accused in the case.

The Ernakulam Principal Sessions Court in Kochi saw intense arguments between Prosecution and counsels of the accused when the bail applications came up for hearing with the former saying that the “hasty” release of the test results was mysterious and the latter arguing that the police’s theory that the accused had consumed cocaine had been proved wrong.

As per the report of the Regional Chemical Examination laboratory at Kakkanad, Kochi, submitted to the court the other day, the blood samples of all the five accused in the case had tested negative for cocaine suggesting that the claim of the police that all the accused had been on cocaine high when they were arrested.

The Kochi Police had arrested new generation Malayalam film actor Shine Tom Chacko (31) and four young women – designer Reshma Rangaswamy (26), assistant film director Blessy Sylvester (22), model Tinsy Babu (25) and travel firm owner Sneha Babu (25) – in an early morning raid on January 31 from a Kochi apartment for possessing and using cocaine.

Shine, the only accused to get a chance to speak to the media at least for some seconds, had claimed that he had not used cocaine as he had visited the flat for discussions on a film project on the invitation of Blessy and that the police had not seized any drug from him. All the accused had been in custody since then.

According to the police, they had seized seven grams of cocaine from the accused, who had been holding ‘smoke parties’ at the flat owned by controversial businessman Muhammad Nisham, accused in the case pertaining to the murder of security guard Chandrabose of the posh Sobha City villa complex in Thrissur.

The police now claim that it was mysterious how the Kakkanad lab had submitted the test results within a month while the process normally used to take several months. The Prosecution also aired the suspicion that the accused could have influenced the analysts. It said the Kakkanad lab was not equipped to handle analyses of samples for drugs like cocaine.

The Kochi Police wants the blood samples of the accused to be put to HPlC analysis which, according to them, alone can detect cocaine traces in blood. They are also planning to subject the blood samples of the accused to DNA profiling at the forensic laboratory in Thiruvananthapuram.