KOCHI: For the police, an unnatural death is just the beginning of the story. Ask any police officer who has investigated one and you would soon realise how complex the process is. It calls for a multi-pronged strategy to separate each strand of the complex web of possibilities surrounding a suspicious death.

But, is our police force, known for its investigative edge, competent enough to follow each of these leads and build cases that would ultimately end in the guilty being punished? Many doubt it. What with the sharp increase in reports about police officers' involvement with those on the wrong side of the law — the case of alleged murder of a private financier being the latest — their doubts appear justified.

Over a year ago, a proposal was submitted to the then Director General of Police on forming an exclusive murder investigation team in each district that would include, besides a couple of police officers, a forensic medic, a forensic expert, a fingerprint expert, a legal adviser and a trained social worker with proven credentials. Nothing has come of it.

Zachariah George, Assistant Commissioner of Police (administration), Kozhikode city, who had forwarded the proposal to the DGP, still feels that a team with diverse professional skills would go a long way in improving the quality of investigations and in ensuring that the guilty are punished.

It often happens that cases charged by the police fail to stand the scrutiny of law and the guilty escape through the loopholes in the case. With a team of specialists, it would become next to impossible for vested interests to manipulate investigations, says Mr. George, who had sent his proposal to the DGP invoking an appeal to police personnel, issued in 1967 by the then IG of Police M. Gopalan, to come up with suggestions to improve the force.

Disturbing questions

The alleged triple murder at Kanichukulangara and the investigation now on into the shady world of certain private financiers in Ernakulam have thrown up many disturbing questions about the efficacy of the police force. Modernisation of the force is one solution being suggested to usher in more objectivity to investigations.

Officers like S. Surendran, Assistant Commissioner of Police, Crime Detachment, Kochi City, are of the view that modernisation would bridge the communication gap between the police and the public to a great extend and would help improve the quality of policing.

The failure of the police to put down goondas who use their muscle power to collect money is often cited as yet another proof for police-goonda nexus. But the fact remains that few of the victims come up with formal complaints.

Mr. Surendran, who was involved in the efforts to curb activities of private finance companies ending up in coercion and crime, said that he failed to get any such complaint from the merchants and public so as to start working on it. Many of these people claim that they belong to prominent goonda groups, even while there would be no such connections. This could never be verified, especially after the money changes hands.

"What we can do is to collect information about these people and then keep track of them," said Mr. Surendran.

Another senior official in the Kochi City Police, without wishing to reveal his identity, admitted that the situation has come to such a pass on account of the connivance of police in illegal activities of private financiers and sand and hooch mafia.

A couple of years ago, the people of Cherai, which is at the vortex of the ongoing investigation into the Kanichukulangara case, had formed a people's council to fight against increasing goonda activities in the region, most of them associated with private finance companies.

"Till the end of 2002, Cherai had been a peaceful place. It was then that private chit funds started employing goondas. We had complained to the District Collector and a meeting was convened. Although people had complained about the involvement of police personnel at the meeting, but without any tangible result," remembers C.M. Devassy, Vypeen Block Panchayat president.

Adds V.S. Radhakrishnan, convener of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe Samrakshana Munnani in the area: "four of our boys were attacked by mistake by goondas of a financial institution on July 4, 2002. One of them suffered serious head injury. Even though the attackers confessed that it was a mistake, a case was registered against the victims the same night for attempting to rob money from the agents of the institution. Our case against them for murderous assault was registered four days later."

Efforts to curb FIs

In 2004, the then Additional Director General of Police (Intelligence) Rajan Madhekar had submitted a report calling for immediate attention to the increasing instances of transactions by unregistered financial institutions resulting in criminal activities.

"We wanted a two-pronged approach. One, there should be proper registration of financial institutions. Then, there should be speedy and efficient methods for recovering outstanding loans. Most of these institutions resort to violence to recover loans," says Mr. Madhekar, now Additional Director General of Police (Operations).

The Police Headquarters forwarded this report to the State Crime Records Bureau (SCRB) to elicit details from the 17 district units of the police on such activities, but it did not get the expected result, said one police officer who was involved in the process.

There was also a suggestion for forming an Economic Intelligence Wing in the State police to monitor these private finance companies, but that too was not acted upon. The situation in Kochi city, home to many new-generation banks and private financial institutions, has improved a lot after a drive by the City Police, though nothing much has changed in suburbs like Paravoor, Angamali, Kalady and Ettumanur.

"We asked the new-generation banks to be sure about the credentials of their collection agents. They were warned against employing history-sheeters and told to approach the local police stations to recover hypothecated vehicles from defaulting customers," recalls Dinendra Kashyap, outgoing Commissioner of Police, Kochi.

Most finance companies, which are either unregistered or work at individual levels, are found to employ history-sheeters for recovering loans. It is hard to track them, or to control them. Many such people were called up and warned not to use illegal methods in loan recovery. Also, the intervention by the police, on many instances, forced these collection agencies to stop employing criminals at the lower end of their network, said Mr. Surendran.

Nationalised banks have all along taken precautions to keep criminal elements out of their transactions. "Our panel of recovery agents is prepared after thorough investigation into the applicants' antecedents to ensure that no one with a criminal background are empanelled. Also, we take an undertaking from these approved panellists that only legal measures would be adopted for recovering loans," said an officer at the Ernakulam Zonal Office of the State Bank of India. Although several attempts have been made in the past to modernise the police force, there has not been the desired change.

V.G. Govindan Nair, a leading lawyer in Thiruvananthapuram, feels that it is the State administration that should be held responsible for the situation.

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