KOCHI: It seems a divine intervention is imperative to recovering the hard disk that contains the CCTV footage from Hotel No 18, Fort Kochi, where Miss South India Ansi Kabeer and two others attended a night party right before their death in a car accident on November 1. It is believed that hotel staff threw the disk into the Kochi backwaters, and in many previous cases, efforts to retrieve anything from the backwaters have proved in vain.
Over the years, the Vembanad lake has witnessed many searches for material evidence that was pivotal to a slew of crimes. The perpetrators seem to have made a pattern out of throwing pieces of evidence into the backwaters purportedly to destroy proof, police officers said.
Actor assault case
In the sensational actor molestation case of 2017, search operations were conducted in the backwaters with the assistance of the Navy’s diving team for the most vital piece of evidence — the mobile phone used to record the sexual assault. However, the five-member diving team returned empty-handed despite having used advanced equipment to scout the waters below the first Goshree bridge. The search was based on the deposition of Pulsar Suni aka Sunil Kumar, in which he claimed to have hurled the phone into the backwaters near the first Goshree bridge on his way to surrender at the Ernakulam Chief Judicial Magistrate Court. However, the investigators could not make any headway in tracing the phone or the memory card, despite interrogating Suni and his accomplice Vijeesh for about five days.
Floating body
Almost four years ago, CA student Mishel Shaji Varghese, 19, was found floating in the backwaters of Kochi. In order to establish concrete evidence of suicide, the Crime Branch conducted a probe to recover her bag and mobile phone.
The investigators searched the waters under the second Goshree bridge with the help of private scuba divers. Once again, the efforts bore no fruit and the Crime Branch concluded it was a suicide.
The family members of the victim are seeking a CBI probe in the case.
Calculated throw
Police officers opine that culprits are well-aware that evidence cannot be retrieved from the backwaters, and hence resort to throwing them in there. “During the trial of the case, the agencies have to argue before the court that they had attempted to retrieve the material evidence and failed. In many cases, the officers themselves know there is no point in attempting to search the water,” said an officer. Criminologist James Vadakkumcherry also echoed a similar view. “The culprits know that no evidence can be retraced from the lake that flows into the Arabian sea.
Since the notorious Kakkayam camp case in which Rajan, a student of Regional Engineering College, Kozhikode, was murdered allegedly by third-degree torture, the accused deliberately destroyed evidence by throwing it into the water,” he said. He pointed out that the investigators should employ other scientific ways of investigation such as narco analysis and lie detection tests to find leads.