Unsolved crimes give sleepless nights for Tamil Nadu cops

Despite a reasonably good record of crime detection, the city police are still groping in the dark with a few unsolved crimes, particularly murders for passion and gain as well. DC takes a look at five such crimes that left detectives clueless this year.

1 Almost a year has gone by since an 86-year-old woman and her granddaughter inside their house at VGP Shanti Nagar, Pallikaranai, were found brutally murdered. Armed robbers had ransacked the house and escaped with 20 sovereigns of gold ornaments. The victims’ decomposed bodies were found on the morning of January 4 by some relatives who went to the house to check as both victims were not responding to calls on mobile. Investigators could not lift fingerprints from the crime scene and the modus operandi resembled that of a gang of professional robbers.

2 The city police are still on the lookout for a 25-year-old BPO employee who after killing his girlfriend in his apartment, by hitting her on her forehead with a flower vase, left her body in his car at his apartment on March 9. Dinesh of VJ Flats on Barrakka Road, Secretariat Colony, visited his ailing father before he disappeared. He left his mobile phone behind to make sure that the police did not track him using the instrument. He manages to make sure that he doesn’t leave any digital trail. He has withdrawn money with his ATM card. And he still continues to be a wanted man. Dinesh had to leave the body of his girlfriend in the car because the apartment guard became suspicious of his activity.

3 Another case is the murder of 32-year-old woman doctor S, Sangeetha at West Mogappair in the first week of May for her 12-sovereign gold chain. Police said the death was due to injuries caused by the chain. There were no external injuries or signs of struggle. The murder came to light when family members of Sangeetha, a resident of Karnan Street, reached the clinic as she failed to answer phone calls and also failed to reach home for lunch. Though the police suspected that one of her patients had killed the dentist, they could not zero in on the killer.

4 Even six months after a lawyer allegedly killed two of his children, aged 13 and 11, by poisoning them at Maduravoyal, the police are still on the look out for him. In this case also, the police found it was almost impossible to track Ravi because his mobile phone has been switched off since then. He was practising at Poonamalee special court. The bodies of Ravi’s children – R. Ishwarya Priyadarshini and R. Jaya Krishna Prabhu - were found in the bedroom in a decomposed state in the first week of June. Police investigations revealed that Ravi was separated from his wife Maheshwari , also an advocate, about a year ago. Maheshwari lived at Chidambaram while the children were living with Ravi. The last his neighbours had seen him was Ravi leaving his two-wheeler behind and going out in his car, the police said.

5 The identity of a two-year-old boy, whose body was washed ashore on the sands of Marina in the first week of September, remains a mystery to investigators. Some members of the fishermen community saw the body and informed the police. Police initially believed the child could have been from a nearby fishing hamlet. But enquiries in and around those hamlets received no positive result and cops could not establish the identity. “It does not look like an accidental death. But somebody seems to have thrown the boy into the sea to kill him. There was no enquiry even after so many weeks. It is also possible that the boy drowned somewhere else and the body washed ashore on the sands of Marina,” the police said.