The ABC of police investigation

They were just about celebrating their recent achievement, of cracking three important cases - two alleged serial killers and a rowdy sheeter - in a span of one month when home maker Selvi was murdered in her house in Govindarajanagar this week.

Did it undo the image of the City police?  “The public perception of City police is like Sachin Tendulkar’s performance. If he doesn’t make enough runs in a one-day match, people start saying he should be out of the team. But in the next match, if Sachin scores a century, the same people start swearing by him. They say he is unparalleled. It’s the same with us,” said Joint Commissioner (Crime) Gopal B Hosur.

He admitted that for a couple of solved cases, there would be many unsolved or undetected cases, and even those which never come to light. “One of the main reasons is the way police setup functions. If the investigating officer is transferred while he is halfway through an investigation, his successor has to start from the beginning. That may take a lot of time, and he may lose out on vital evidence,” he explained.

How do the police crack a case? Most of the time, investigation is done at the police station-level. But in sensational cases (like that of Mallika, allegedly India’s first woman serial killer, who has the blood of more than half a dozen women on her hands; Chandrakanth Sharma, who has confessed to killing around 20 people in a span of 21 years; and notorious rowdy sheeter JCB Narayana, who had been eluding the police net for the past five years) special teams are formed to track the criminal, under the supervision of a senior officer.

Modus operandi

“Every criminal leaves behind some clue at the scene of crime. Also, what we track is the modus operandi of the criminal. Each criminal has a different MO. In Mallika’s case, there were complaints of missing women, from temple precincts, last seen with Mallika. One of her victims, Elizabeth, was from Bangalore. So when she went missing, police started tracking her and eventually our team was able to get Mallika. Since she is a woman, we had to be careful in interrogating her. We took the help of people for who she had worked. They were shocked to find out that she was a serial killer. They said she was a nice woman, very trustworthy. Some of them said they used to leave their children with her. We made her open up using personal information. It unnerved her,” said Mr Hosur.
Before interrogating a criminal, the police gets a factsheeet of their personal life, some details that only they know. “Initially Mallika denied her involvement in the murder of her victims, but we brought forward relatives of the victims, who told her that they had last seen them in her company. She couldn’t deny it,” the officer said.
Sharma’s case was simple because his victim Raghavan’s son lodged a missing complaint of his father when he did not return home. Krishnagiri police found Raghavan’s half-burnt body with some telephone numbers, and that’s how Sharmas were tracked. “In their case, we interrogated Sharma and Sharma’s wife Harsha separately, on similar questions. Their answers were different. Then we brought them together and made them question each other on certain key areas. Both of them fumbled. The body language of the criminal also gives vital clues. They will be uncomfortable, restless and will not meet the eye,” he added.

Sharma claimed to have killed 20 people. A police team took him to Pune, Nashik and Manmad, where he said he had committed maximum number of murders. “Only in one instance, our teams could meet the father of the victim. The other places have been demolished and new buildings have come up. We may take some time to get at the bottom of the truth,” said Mr Hosur adding that often criminals hype up their crime to confuse the police.
In JCB’s case, police had some definite information about him and his MO; how he used to sense properties; his high-handedness and the way he used to threaten genuine landlords. “We got information about his movement and we caught him,” he added.

Intelligence and information gathering is vital to any investigation. From police informants to those in the general public, sleuths rely heavily on information. “If people have faith in the police, they come forward and share information,” said the officer.

Who is a bigger challenge to the police, the rowdy or the silent criminals?
“Both because the rowdies know how the police behave and function, and the silent criminals are so unassuming. They could be taking to us,” said DCP Crime, N D Mulla. “Though we do a thorough work of how a criminal may have done the crime, sometimes, the criminals leave us stunned at the way they went about it,” he added.