COIMBATORE: While efforts of the Coimbatore city police in swiftly identifying the body of a woman found in a house in Tashkent Nagar near Goldwins, is to be appreciated, a police release signed by Peelamedu Inspector K Gobi, affixed with a picture of the supposed victim, turned out to be a source of embarrassment on Monday, since the victim in the picture called up and informed the cops that she was alive and well in Chennai.
Last week, police found the decomposed body of a woman in a house, and named 35-year-old Selvam, a lathe worker, as a suspect in the woman’s murder.
The Peelamedu police found a pen drive at the scene of crime and found pictures of a woman. They showed the pictures to other residents in the locality, where the murder had occurred. They told police that the woman in the picture was seen with the accused around the time of the murder.
Following this, cops had issued a release to the media to gather more details about the murder victim.
Speaking to Express, Peelamedu Inspector K Gobi confirmed that the woman in the picture was alive, and that efforts were being made to ascertain the identity of the murder victim. Special teams are already in place to nab the accused.
Nisha Parthiban, DCP (L&O) said, “The police had issued the release based on the testimony of an eyewitness, who was shown the picture of the woman from the recovered pen drive. The witness had confirmed to the police that the woman in the picture was seen with Selvam on the day the murder is believed to have occurred.”
“It is not an arbitrary release by the police, but was based on seemingly credible information from a witness,” she added. This is not the first incident where a dead body was wrongly identified by the city police. In 2014, RS Puram police wrongly identified the body of a man whose body was found in an abandoned shed near the railway tracks close to Brooke Bond Road.