Outwardly, though Frank Capra wasn't around to film it, the then 30-year-old Cadell Jeansen Raja was leading a wonderful life. The 'technopreneur with a fascination for computer games' lived in a two-storied villa in the heart of Thiruvananthapuram.
House number 117, Bains Compound, was just a few shouts away from the Kerala Chief Minister's official residence. The family was well off. His father was retired Professor A Raja Thankam and his mother, retired cardiologist Dr Jean Padma (58). The other two members were his sister Caroline (26), a medical graduate, and his visually challenged aunt Lalitha (70).
But the so-called idyll fell apart on April 9, 2017.
This was the day when four bodies were discovered by our police team that had rushed to the house after being informed of a fire there.
The murders, which were later found to have been executed on April 5 and 6, had been brutal. Lalitha's body had 22 wounds, Caroline's 12, Jean Padma's nine, and Raja Thankam had suffered seven cuts on the head. Three of the bodies were mutilated and charred, a clear sign that there had been an attempt to destroy the evidence. When we finally nabbed Cadell, he began spinning one tale after another wearing a never-waning smile.
These chilling details came rushing back to me as Cadell was sentenced by an additional sessions court in Thiruvananthapuram to rigorous imprisonment for 12 years and an additional life term for the murders on May 13.
I remembered my interrogation sessions with him and the peek into his psyche that this afforded.
Unlike culprits before him, Cadell was unbreakable and in full denial. So, we resorted to examining the digital evidence. To our shock, we learnt that Cadell had been spending most of his waking hours on the internet or phone. Even his mother and sister communicated with him mostly through text messages.
It also emerged that he was spending his time surfing violent content. He had been regularly watching certain crime serials. And he had also been searching diligently for various methods by which a murder could be carried out and also for the best murder weapons.
In the end, even the weapons he used to carry out his crimes were found to have been ordered online. We also learnt that he did dry runs with the murder weapons using a dummy kept in the washroom. He only admitted his crimes when we convinced him that we had all the proof his computer and phone offered.
Then came another twist -- Cadell feigned psychosis. But this too was blown away because we had uncovered how he had searched online to fake psychosis and claim legal insanity. He was only following that script! In my long service of about 30 years till then, I had never come across another murder culprit who had carried out his crimes entirely with knowledge gained through the internet.
Driven by virulent anger against his father
The motive behind the crime was his enmity towards his father. According to the culprit, Raja Thankam had been given to drinking and was leading a footloose life after his retirement. This had fuelled Cadell's animosity towards his father.
There was also seething resentment against the fact that his parents had sent him to Philippines to pursue medicine when he wished to study history. When Cadell came back after dropping out, he was sent to Australia to pursue computer engineering. He couldn't complete that course too. But his parents hid all this from the outside world by claiming that their son had gone on to become an ace computer programmer. In fact, till we investigated Cadell, we had also been led to believe by neighbours and everyone else that he was a computer engineer.
Only during the interrogation did we realise that he had failed to even graduate. Cadell's sense of non-achievement made him resent his father that much more.
Initially, he was obsessed only with the thought of murdering Raja Thankam. Killing the other family members was an afterthought. He didn't have any love either for his mother or sister. He later said that he blamed his mother for doing nothing to rein in his father. This made him conclude that his mother also didn't deserve to live. Once the parents were murdered, he wondered why his sister and aunt, who both depended on them, should be left to live.
'Lily, lily, lily', that Swiggy answer and total social disconnect
I remember at least a dozen family suicides cum murders that I came across during my police career. Social seclusion and a sense of unworthiness played a big part in these cases.
Unlike such tragic instances, in this particular case in Thiruvananthapuram, the culprit showed no sign of remorse even while confessing to his crime.
During interrogation, his disconnect with his family and home was glaringly obvious. I remember asking Cadell to name five flowers. He felt lost and kept smiling. So, I asked him to name at least three flowers. He said, "Lily, lily, lily."
This, when his house had a beautiful sprawling garden with a wide variety of flowers!
Similarly shocking was the response we got when we asked him to name his favourite home-cooked dishes. He could remember only items he used to order through Swiggy. It was the first time that I came across a youth who grew up in a house in a city and was so at sea when it came to memories associated with it.
Then there was his total social disconnect. He had no friends or relatives he could confide in.
Remember, this was someone who had travelled and seen the world. He had grown up in a wealthy nuclear family with a father and mother who were in professions that put them in regular contact with people. But when I asked him about his childhood friends, I was told that his parents discouraged him from having any friends because they may spoil him!
He seemingly also had no hobbies except surfing the net and playing video games or watching crime serials.
Another criminal who showed no remorse
Remembering about Cadell also reminded me about a case that I investigated when I was an Assistant Superintendent of Police.
A 15-year-old girl, going to sell milk to a village teashop, was raped and murdered by an 18-year-old college student. I recollected how he failed to show any remorse during interrogation. Instead, he only expressed his disappointment at being unable to carry out the rape properly. Pornography and films that had sexual 'bits' had driven him to where he was.
This criminal too did not have any friends or any connection with his family.
Learnings
We as a society then need to realise that growing up without social or familial ties and without any responsibility or ambition can turn anyone into a hardcore criminal.
In Kerala, where I hail from, I find that many in the younger generation are not finding time to bond with family members or to connect regularly with their true friends. As they grow older, many of them are instead finding new mates who might have fallen prey to undesirable habits.
Proper channelisation of the energy of youth by ensuring they are involved in creative activities, constructive politics in the campus etc. is now missing, I find.
Worryingly, the movies that attract the youth of today are filled with violence. And the youth icons they admire are people with more than just feet of clay, some of them even being guilty of drug abuse as recent events have shown. But then, such behaviour is being seen as the 'new normal'.
Dysfunctional parenting, social disconnect, emotional neglect and digital addiction are among the factors that might be contributing to the problem and we need to find ways to address these.
While I was Director General of Fire Force, Home Guards and Civil Defence, I had suggested to the government that we train all college students in civil defence. The Civil Defence Act of India envisages that at least 1% of the population of India should be trained in civil defence. The programme we have chalked out for training civil defence volunteers is good enough to equip them to be citizens with good civic sense.
The Collegiate Education Department can easily train the entire college student community with the help of the Fire Force, who can lend a body of trainers. State governments must seriously think of implementing such a project.
Channelising the energy of the youth through such projects inculcating social responsibility is a must. We also need to sensitise them to our history and roots. Creating a social connect and sense of purpose among the youth is the need of the hour.
(Dr B Sandhya IPS (retired) is a former DGP, Kerala.)
