Sources said the repository will be prepared by the intelligence wing and the State Crime Records Bureau.
Sources said the repository will be prepared by the intelligence wing and the State Crime Records Bureau.Photo | Express Illustrations

Kerala cops to collate data on cases where kin turned murderers

The objective is to get the statistics and all related data on parricide cases so that mitigation plans can be charted out to deal with the issue.
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THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Amid a spurt in murders involving close family members, the police department has initiated a discussion among its ranks to set up an exclusive database on such cases, beginning from the Covid lockdown period. The objective is to get the statistics and all related data on parricide cases so that mitigation plans could be charted out to deal with the issue.

Sources said the repository will be prepared by the intelligence wing and the State Crime Records Bureau. The current practice followed by the police is to count the parricide cases under murder. However, the rise in murder cases involving family members has prompted the police higher-ups to consider such cases separately.

There is a dearth of scientific study and analysis on parricide cases and that hinders effective policing in such incidents, said a source. “There are multiple dimensions to these cases and they ought to be reviewed separately and intensely. In most of the cases, apart from alcohol and drug abuse, the elements of money, emotion and lust are involved. Once we have proper data on such a category of cases, we can chart out action plans to deal with the issue,” the source said.

The data bank will cover all the cases that occurred since the Covid-induced lockdown. A senior police officer said the pandemic brought a drastic change in the interaction between individuals, especially within the family.

“The penetration of the internet rose exponentially during the period and that had a telling effect on human relationships. We have to set a time period for the collection of data and have tentatively decided to start from the Covid lockdown period,” the officer said. All aspects of parricide cases will be analysed with an academic interest, the officer said.

‘Need all info for deeper understanding of issue’

“It’s an undeniable fact that violent genres of movies, pornography, etc. do have an impact on people’s minds. It’s the family members who are the first ones to face the repercussions. Registering cases is just like scratching the surface of the matter. We need to have a deeper understanding of the issue, and for that, we need to have all available information at our disposal,” the officer said.

The state has been witnessing a slew of parricide cases of late, the latest being the murder of a two-and-a-half-year-old allegedly by her maternal uncle at Balaramapuram in Thiruvananthapuram.

In another incident, a 25-year-old youth hacked his mother to death at Puthuppady near Thamarassery last month.

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