THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Like the past year, Attingal Deputy Superintendent of Police (DySP) Prathapan Nair has just added another medal to his uniform on Wednesday when his department felicitated 76 men across the state for their detective excellence in a handful of criminal cases solved in the year 2013.
While this time, he got accolades for the Bunty Chor case, last time it was for the Hari Hara Varma murder probe. The murder of deputy tehsildar Shailaja at Kilimanoor, the twin murders committed by techie Nino Mathew at Alamocode are some of the cases his team cracked in 2014.
Critics say Nair is one lucky cop who happens to investigate every other case that turns out to be headline-grabbing. However, with his rich detective experience, Nair is so systematic that he does not let his cases turn into 'cold cases’ that are transferred to other investigative agencies.
“You need to scale-up all of the evidence you have and probe each. For example, in the 2013 Attingal Popular finance heist case, the suspects had used a 600 mm tag lock to tie-up employees before stealing 1.5 kg gold and cash. The tag lock was an imported one, bigger than the ones used on bags in our super markets. Further probing the clue, we found that similar ones were used by thieves who struck a sunglass factory in Tamil Nadu. We traced them with ease,” said Mr Nair. He added that it was very important to identify and maintain a strong team exclusively for investigation.
Nair’s colleagues CPO Lanchulal and Yashodharan also received medals for the Bunty Chor case on Wednesday.
At a time when police had no technology to trace cellphone locations of suspects, painstaking surveillance of a criminal’s aides and relatives were needed to crack cases.
Prathapan Nair still remembers how he followed the activities of the mother of Goon LTTE Kabeer while he was hiding at unapproachable Enayam Puthanthurai coastal village in Kanyakumari. Kabeer was nabbed but later murdered by a bomb near Attakulangara jail by Karate Farooq’s gang.
Nair was among many who were nurtured by former ace officers of the city like Ramachandran alias Allu (spike) Ramachandran and former RAW officer DYSP (retd) B Sasidharan.
