KOCHI: It’s a filmy plot: a man-missing case in Kochi turning out to be a murder mystery in Goa. The complex probe began with a tip-off received by Kochi City Police Deputy Commissioner S Sasidharan, known for cracking complex cases such as the Elanthoor double murder.
Flashback to November 2021. Jeff John Louis, a 27-year-old resident of Perumanoor in Kochi, goes missing, and a case is registered as his mother lodges a complaint at the Ernakulam South police station.
Initial efforts to locate Jeff yield no results. An MBA dropout, the youngster frequently travelled away from home, staying in distant places for several weeks. The probe hits a dead end.
Fast-forward to September 2023. The case remains among pending files.
“One fine day, a person informed me that a youth from Kochi had been killed and buried in Goa,” says Sasidharan, who took charge as DCP in Kochi last year. “I instructed my officers to check for unsolved murders or missing cases. We noted Jeff’s disappearance while scrutinising the files.”
Sasidharan formed a probe team with his best sleuths. “We began by examining Jeff’s circle of friends, mobile phone records, and social media activities,” he explains. “We discovered that he had been in Goa and Kodaikanal before the man-missing case was reported. Information about his involvement in drug business also surfaced, leading us to a suspect, who later turned out to be the mastermind behind Jeff’s gruesome murder.”
Subsequently, the probe team zeroed in on suspects Anil Chacko and Stephin Thomas, both natives of Kottayam, and Vishnu T V of Wayanad. Officers took the trio into custody. Although they initially claimed not to have seen Jeff after meeting him in Goa, their resistance didn’t last long. Meanwhile, the officers got in touch with the Goa Police.
“There was an unnatural death case registered at Anjuna police station in Goa that aligned with our findings,” notes Sasidharan. “However, since their investigation didn’t yield any results, they had disposed of the deceased’s body after preserving DNA samples. By that time, the three suspects in our custody confessed to the crime. Now, the only remaining task was to unravel the entire episode.”
Along with the accused in custody, the probe team headed to Goa. Jeff and the trio were involved in a drug business centred in Kodaikanal. A dispute arose over ‘investment’.
Jeff initially promised to pay a sum of money but later withdrew his commitment. This angered the others. They took him to a hill in Vagator in Goa for a ‘business discussion’. There, they stabbed Jeff and pummelled him to death with rocks. The body was left in an isolated location. One of the accused, Anil, travelled to Uttarakhand and used Jeff’s mobile phone there for a month so as to mislead any police investigation.
While gathering evidence in Goa, the accused trio disclosed the names of two others involved in the murder. That led to the arrest of two Wayanad natives, Muthappan and Keshavan, in Tamil Nadu. “We have received confirmation that the body recovered in Goa was indeed of Jeff’s. The DNA samples preserved by Goa police matched with samples from Jeff’s relatives. We will present strong evidence in court to ensure the conviction of the accused individuals,” says Sasidharan.
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