KOCHI: Dr B Umadathan was a treasure of knowledge and his uncanny ability to unearth forensic evidence had helped police crack many sensational murder cases. For him, a body on a post-mortem table was the main door to truth. “Whenever a crime like murder takes place, culprits attempt to hide the truth. It’s the task of the investigator to unravel it.
Everybody on the post-mortem table communicates to the surgeon to find the truth and his task is to find evidence to get to this truth,” Umadathan had told “Express” during an earlier interaction while he served as the professor and head of Forensic Medicine at Amrita School of Medicine, Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences (AIMS) in Kochi.
Dr P S Sanjay, police surgeon at Manjeri Medical College, recollects Umadathan visiting crime scenes to collect additional inputs to help him conduct a detailed post-mortem. He was more of a medical detective than a police surgeon, Sanjay said adding that Umadathan used to freely share his knowledge with youngsters.
Former State Police Chief Jacob Punnoose said Umadathan had the ability to link forensic evidence with other evidence collected from a scene of crime. “From the evidence collected, he would visualise the sequence of actions that resulted in a murder. Many a time, he used to give sequence of events more clear than an eye-witness,” he added. Umadathan’s third book “Kapalam” will be published soon by DC Books.
Mysterious case of Sukumara Kurup
The sensational Chacko murder case of 1984 continues to be a blot on the image of Kerala Police as the main accused Sukumara Kurup is still at large. However, it was Dr Umadathan, who unravelled the mystery behind the case which could have been otherwise recorded as an accident case in which the driver died after the car caught fire. Umadathan, who conducted post-mortem, came to the conclusion that Chacko was poisoned and his face and hair were burnt elsewhere, not inside the car. Umadathan found that there were no residue of charcoal in his respiratory tracts and lungs, which should have been there had the victim was alive when the car caught fire and died in the inferno.
He also found that the stomach had a special odour of a poison. Based on these findings, police unearthed the plot set up by Sukumara Kurup who faked his own death to claim the insurance amount. Kurup gave Chacko, a film representative, lift in his car and was made to drink liquor mixed with ether. After Chacko lost consciousness, he was strangled to death and later his face and hair were burnt to make him unrecognisable. Later, the body was placed behind the wheel and the car was set on fire after pouring 10 litres of petrol over it.