Towards the end of July, Kerala woke up to the news of the chilling escape of Govindachamy. He happened to be the repeat sex offender convicted for life imprisonment for the rape and murder of Soumya, a 23-year-old who was travelling in a train on February 1, 2011, for her betrothal.
Thankfully, Govindachamy was nabbed a few hours later—from a well about 3.5 kms away—with the help of a few locals, allowing society at large to heave a sigh of relief.
People in Kerala discussed the 2019 encounter killing of the culprits accused in the rape and murder of a vet at Hyderabad and talked of how everyone could have been at peace had Govindachamy been sentenced to death or lynched by a mob.
I was keeping a keen eye on all this. After all, it was an investigation team I was involved with that had arrested Govindachamy originally. The arrest came a day after Soumya, travelling in the ladies' compartment of a Shoranur-bound train from Ernakulam, was found in a vegetative state near a railway track at Mullakkara.
The sole breadwinner of a poor family, she had suffered a grievous head injury after being pushed out of the train. Our investigation found that she had been dragged from where she had fallen before being brutally raped.
We had filed a chargesheet for robbery, rape and murder. The Lower Court handed a death sentence to Govindachamy for these crimes. The Kerala High Court also went on to confirm the sentence.
However, the Supreme Court, when the case reached them, only confirmed his life sentence for rape. There had been a serious public outcry when the Supreme Court set aside Govindachamy's death sentence.
Sadly, his crime had been carried out before the Nirbhaya incident that led to big changes in the law on rape. In 2013, the IPC and Evidence Act were amended to include new provisions in the rape law. The BNS 2023 also made provisions that rape in the aggravated forms shall be punished either with death or life imprisonment, which means jail for the remainder of life.
The law now appreciates the fact that repeat sex offenders are dangerous to society. It is a vital distinction, as I have myself seen that many sex offenders have the habit of repeating the offence.
Govindachamy and the trouble with habitual offenders
Take Govindachamy himself.
While we were investigating the Shoranur case, we had found that he had been convicted in twelve cases—mostly for robbery, theft and rape on trains. The staff from the Railway Police Station, Salem, had cautioned us that there could be many more unreported cases involving him as women sometimes did not report rape.
They told us about unidentified dead bodies found along railway tracks and of how Govindachamy was suspected to have a hand in these deaths. But they told me they couldn't collect any evidence, as those bodies were in a decomposed state by the time they were found.
In the Shoranur case, Govindachamy had stolen Soumya's mobile phone and imitation gold. And within hours after the crime, he had sold her phone in Palakkad.
From the crime records, we had learnt that Govindachamy lived a life that led him from one crime to another. He did not have any family. The moment he was out of jail, he indulged in crime. This was the man who escaped from prison late July and roamed free for a few hours.
It was shocking to learn, as The New Indian Express reported, that Govindchamy had been planning the escape for over a year—collecting the tools he needed and cutting the bars that held him while it rained heavily to avoid suspicion and losing weight to be fit to scale the prison walls once he broke free from his cell. He had even grown a beard.
The reformative theory of punishment fails to improve such habitual offenders.
Lessons to learn from modern prison systems
Modern prison systems realise this. My visits to the modern Correctional Services Institutions in countries like Australia and the US underlined this to me.
In Australia, prisoners get the opportunity to do pottery, masonry and much more. They are also allowed to read books in the prison library. However, all this is only for convicts whom the system considers reformable.
In the US, I saw a high-security prison where repeat sex offenders and murderers are kept. A triple-layer security structure ensures the prisoners can never escape.
The number of prisoners who are repeat sex offenders and serial murderers isn't many in Indian jails. So, building high-security cells in at least one prison in every state for such dangerous criminals will be ideal.
I remember investigating a case in which some prisoners had killed a fellow prisoner. This had happened in the forensic ward where some of the prisoners were mentally unsound. They had all been left together!
It is a fact that our prisons are overcrowded. This makes ensuring the standards of security and hygiene that are truly needed impossible to achieve.
I am reminded of my visit to a jail for investigation around 20 years ago in this context. I found that all the prisoners were suffering from conjunctivitis. When I enquired why, the Superintendent told me that the eye infection had spread since they couldn't find a way to separate those infected.
Dangers posed by habitual offenders coming together
Overcrowding in Indian jails continues to remain a serious problem. In fact, the average occupancy rate in Indian prisons is 131% according to the India Justice Report, 2025.
Such numbers should worry everyone. More so, since many criminal plans are hatched in prisons.
When habitual offenders get a chance to interact with one another, many new crimes end up being committed by those who get released or jump bail.
I remember an instance a culprit narrated to us while we were investigating the Urakom Temple and Marth Mariam Church theft cases in Kerala's Thrissur district.
This culprit had gotten married at the Thiruvattar temple in Tamil Nadu's Kanyakumari. A lot of gold and precious stones adorn the idol in that famous temple. While our culprit was tying the mangalsootra, his eyes fell upon them.
He spent a month honeymooning. Then he invited his friend, who had just been released from jail, to join him in the theft he had planned on the day of his wedding. Afterwards, they hid the precious stones (which, of course, we recovered later) in his grandmother's kitchen since they wanted to wait till another friend was released. This friend would be the one to fence the jewels at the best possible price.
I recount this to underline how repeat/habitual offenders operate. Nowadays, they also take advantage of technology, and this adds another dimension.
Effective tracking of habitual offenders in the modern era then needs a serious rethink.
Earlier, jails used to send a list of prisoners who were released to the concerned police stations, who would then track them through beat patrols. Such simple systems cannot work anymore.
In 2022, the Delhi High Court suggested GPS anklets for repeated sex offenders. Additionally, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) based monitoring tags can be used to ensure that tracking will be possible even in the event of an escape from prison. If such a system had been used, for example, Govindachamy’s escape and route could have been monitored more effectively.
Facial recognition surveillance can be installed at public places, checkposts and pilgrim centres to begin with. Realtime matching of released or wanted persons can be done. It was pioneered at Sabarimala.
Predictive analysis and AI are also being employed in the UK and the US. Pilot studies have also been done in Telangana. We need to pursue this. Both the reformation of our prisons and the use of modern technology to keep hardened criminals where they belong are immediate needs. A truly Viksit Bharat needs them.
(Dr B Sandhya IPS (retired) is a former DGP, Kerala.)