With the Crime Branch CID of the Tamil Nadu police being vested with yet another high profile case – the murder of former Union Minister M.K. Alagiri’s aide ‘Pottu’ Suresh in 2013 – the agency will have its task cut out. The CB-CID’s track record in cracking sensational crimes is a mixed bag with quite a few cases remaining unsolved. The piling up of cases is seen as an added burden to the agency established in 1906.
The ‘Pottu’ Suresh murder case which has political implications has been given to the CB-CID barely months ahead of the Assembly election Tamil Nadu. The agency is also struggling hard to detect the murder of K.N. Ramajeyam, brother of former DMK State Minister K.N. Nehru, whose body was found in Tiruchi on March 29, 2012.
Under pressure from the Madras High Court, investigators are reportedly closing in on some suspects who were subjected to lie-detector tests recently.
The premium investigation agency of the State that was once engaged in specialised cases now handles a diverse range of offences, including suicides, cricket betting and religious fundamentalism. The recently created Special Investigation Division (SID) handles a series of communal murders and also the sensational bid to blow up the convoy of senior Bharatiya Janata party leader L.K. Advani near Madurai in October, 2011.
Sources in the CB-CID say the strength of manpower and infrastructure are not commensurate with the number of cases. “The focus on one case gets shifted to another over a period of time due to various reasons. For instance, the train hijacking case which resulted in the death of four persons in Chennai remains undetected. In decades old cases like the alleged Co-optex scam and the fake stamp paper, the charge-sheets have been filed and are pending trial,” a senior police officer said.
When a high profile case gets convicted as a result of painstaking investigation, police say the sense of complacency would last just that day. “It is a fresh case the next day or perusal of pending cases. Under pressure to solve cases, we tend to miss out on small clues that could result in detection. For instance, a simple clue provided by a domestic help helped in solving the Dilson murder case in 2012. The 13-year-old boy was shot dead when he was trying to pluck fruits in the Defence Residential Complex in Chennai. A casual remark of the woman led to the arrest of Lt. Col (Retd) Kandasamy Ramaraj,” the officer said.
In the gruesome murder of TCS employee B. Uma Maheswari in 2014 in Chennai, the CB-CID got the first clue when the accused tried to draw money using the debit card of the victim. One of the three suspects tried to insert the SIM card of the girl’s phone in his mobile phone. That was enough for investigators to track down the trio.
As new cases keep coming in either through courts or the government, CB-CID officers say their focus remains on solving every single case with the same diligence. However, the agency has its hands full. Sometimes too many cases are handed over to the CB-CID. To illustrate this, an officer pointed out that the number of cases transferred to the CB--CID increased from 155 in 2008 to 1,321 the very next year.
ON THE TRAIL
Train hijack case
An unidentified man hijacked a suburban train during the early hours of April 29, 2009 in Chennai. He drove the train at a high speed and collided head-on with a goods train at Vyasarpadi Jiva railway station resulting in the death of four persons. The case remains undetected. Since three of the four persons killed in the incident were identified, the CB-CID believed that the fourth person could be the accused. The agency has announced a reward of Rs. 50,000 to anyone giving information on the identity of the lone suspect.
Ramajeyam case
K.N. Ramajeyam, brother of former DMK State Minister K.N. Nehru, was murdered by unidentified assailants in Tiruchi on March 29, 2012. The case was transferred to the CBCID and remains to be solved.
Co-optex scam
Irregularities were alleged in the purchase of saris from a private source at higher rates, instead of from handloom weavers, causing a huge loss of revenue to the government. The alleged offence took place between 1994 and 1996 when Indira Kumari was the Minister of Social Welfare and Handlooms. Senior IAS officer Jasbir Singh Bajaj was among the accused charge-sheeted in the case. The Madras High Court discharged the officer from the case.
DSP Vishnupriya suicide
The suicide of R. Vishnupriya, Deputy Superintendent of Police, Tiruchengode in Namakkal district, in September this year was transferred to the CB-CID amidst demands of political parties to hand over the investigation to the CBI. The DSP had allegedly taken the extreme step owing to pressure from senior officials to detect a murder case. Investigation is on in the case.
