Karnataka - Bangalore   

Bidari: probe in murder cases will be speeded up

BANGALORE: With several murder cases remaining undetected, justice seems to be a far cry for several families in Bangalore who have lost their kin.

Bangalore’s new Police Commissioner Shankar Mahadev Bidari told The Hindu on Saturday he was aware that many murder cases had remained undetected for long, and that he had listed them for speeding up investigations.

“In the next two days, I will hold a meeting with officers and review the progress of investigations,” he said.

Killing of elderly women and over half-a-dozen double murders top the list of such cases, some of which have remained undetected for over a decade.

While in some incidents the police have established that criminals had killed the elderly people to loot their houses, they have not been able to ascertain the motive behind the killing in several other cases.

Investigators are still groping in the dark in regard to the murders of H. Rajagopalachar (80), a retired teacher who was stabbed at his house in Basaveshwaranagar police station limits on February 22, 2002, and Keshava Prabhu (78), a retired employee of the Police Department who was strangled at his house in Nandini Layout on March 7, 2002.

The police are yet to trace the murderers of four elderly women — Delucie Vaz, Sarai Bai and Jayadevamma — who were stabbed to death at their houses in Cubbon Park, Seshadripuram, Ulsoor and K.R. Puram police station limits respectively, almost four years ago.

Besides, the twin murders of Meena Rasquinha (75) and her maid Prema Mary (65) in Ashoknagar (May 2001); Shankaraiah (90) and his daughter-in-law Padmaja in Vijayanagar (August 2001); and Nirmala (65) and her daughter Rajeshwari in Madivala (August 2002) have also not been solved.

The police have closed the cases and filed “C” report in the court in regard to these double murders.

Normally, the “C” report is filed and the case closed when the culprits are not traced for long.

The main reason for the delay in cracking the murders is that in most of the cases, the investigating officers have been transferred. Their successors are not even aware of facts of the case, says a senior official.

In murder cases, the investigators usually get important clues in a day or two after the incident.

If they fail to get the leads even after a week, the investigation will normally reach a dead end, according to the official.

Indeed, the trend of killing senior citizens, particularly those living alone, started towards the end of 2001.

Four senior citizens Ramakrishnan in Ulsoor, Manjula in Basavanagudi, Jayalakshamma in Chamarajpet and Siddaiah, a retired KAS officer, in MICO Layout, were murdered during October-November 2001.

Later, in February 2002, the police arrested five members of the notorious Dandupalya gang who allegedly committed these murders.

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