The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Identity of train hijacker still remains a mystery

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Friday, Jun 26, 2009
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Identity of train hijacker still remains a mystery

S. Vijay Kumar

DNA reports of girl’s blood samples to ascertain paternity found negative

CHENNAI: Even as a woman claimed that the unidentified dead man in the train hijack case looked like her husband, DNA reports analysed with blood samples of her daughter to ascertain paternity were found to be negative on Thursday.

According to sources in the Crime Branch CID which is investigating the case, the Forensic Science Laboratory had confirmed that the unidentified man in his thirties was not the father of the girl whose blood samples were taken. The woman who works in a private firm in Chennai had seen a video of the dead body and identified the man as her husband Nagaraju.

“The actual Nagaraju has turned up before the CBCID in Kancheepuram. He works in the Railways at Tumkur. The confusion was because of some similarities. Both Nagaraju and the man killed in the accident had their names tattooed in the arm...the physical appearance also matched. Some people in his village Tada (Andhra Pradesh) who saw posters believed that the dead man was Nagaraju,” Inspector General of Police (CBCID) K.P. Maghendran said.

Asked what would be the focus of investigation now, Mr. Maghendran said efforts would continue to establish the identity of the suspect. “We have written to the authorities concerned to dispose of the body. The skull alone was preserved for comparisons in future. The family (of Nagaraju) has been sent back.”

The case relates to the collision of two trains at Vyasarpadi Jiva railway station on April 29 that left four people dead. The fourth person whose identity remains a mystery is suspected to have hijacked the train and drove at high-speed causing the collision. Though investigators were pinning hopes on some phone calls allegedly made by the suspect from a telephone booth, further enquiries revealed that he did not make any such call. Special teams under the supervision of Superintendent of Police A. Arun camped in different States to pursue minute clues. Also, the photographs, fingerprints and profile of railway employees who were suspended/dismissed from service in the recent years from the South Central Railway and Southern Railway were perused.

With these inputs not yielding the desires results, the police distributed pamphlets and pasted posters containing the reconstructed photograph of the dead man in different States.

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