KOCHI: Amid hectic election-related assignments, a team of police officers under the direct monitoring of City Police Commissioner Nagaraju Chakilam and Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Aishwarya Dongre is busy trying to crack two back to back mystery crimes that have put the city police on tenterhooks. Nagaraju Chakilam told TNIE that the police teams are doing their best to solve both the cases and a breakthrough is expected soon.
In both the cases, police teams are facing the biggest challenge of tracking the culprits who have not left behind any evidence that could help the probe team in the investigation. While the first case relates to the death of an 11-year-old girl whose body was found in Muttar river and disappearance of her father Sanu Mohan, the second one is the recovery of a pistol and five bullets from a trolley at Lulu Mall in the city. In Sanu Mohan’s case, police are perusing huge data pertaining to phone call records which the police collected from the mobile phones of Sanu and his wife.
Efforts to collect any clue on the whereabouts of Sanu using digital evidence has become a Herculean task for police because Sanu had sold his mobile phone before disappearing and switched off his wife’s mobile phone, which he was using on the day he left Kochi. Though police recovered Sanu’s mobile phone from a shop, recovery of data was the biggest challenge.
“Based on cal l dat a records and data recovered from the phone, we have been able to pick a few contacts with whom Sanu was in touch before his disappearance. We are verifying a few details and statements collected in the due course of the probe,” said a police officer.
In pistol case, though the police took a person into custody based on the visuals collected from CCTV footage at the mall, he was let off after probe revealed that the person had no connection with the incident. As visuals from CCTV footage aren’t that clear, police are now trying to identify the person through digital image enhancement technique and peruse voluminous video data files recorded by the CCTVs in the mall on the particular day. “It’s not an easy task. We have zeroed-in on a few suspects,” police officials added.