Skull found near Jayanagar Park

DH journalist stumbles on a cranium in a bustling neighbourhood. And she calls the police

It was 3.22 pm on Wednesday. Madhavan Park in Jayanagar was closed when it should have been open. I started walking on the pavement outside the park, treading on dry, fallen leaves. A Bescom transformer box was ahead of me, and then, the sight of a human skull placed on its plinth leapt at me.

It was close to the park gate, and opposite an India Post office, and was starkly visible.

“It doesn’t look like the plasticky, white Halloween skull,” I told myself as I observed its dusty exterior and missing lower jaw. Was it a warning to stay away? The word ‘Danger’ was painted in red on the transformer box.

I opened my WhatsApp and sent the photo to Dr Venkata Raghava S, professor and head of the forensic medicine and toxicology department, Bangalore Medical College and Research Institute. “What should I do? This looks real, right?” I asked. “You have to report it to the police. It appears real, and male,” he said.

I dialled the Basavanagudi traffic police to get the law and order police station’s contact because I could not find it online. Confession: I was supposed to visit a park in Basavanagudi but had mistakenly landed up in Jayanagar 1st Block.

“There is a human skull outside Madhavan Park. Erm... You know, head bone, face bones,” I explained ‘the situation’ to the man on the call. He could not understand what I was saying. I didn’t know the Kannada word for skull, and I was also speaking in a hushed tone to avoid creating panic. “You stay there. We will send the Hoysala police,” he told me. This was at 3.40 pm.

I thought the skull was a mystery in plain sight but people passed by without noticing it. Men were waiting in cars facing the skull but even they didn’t raise an alarm. I wondered: “Is it fake? Does nobody care? Are people ignoring it because they don’t want to get involved with the police?”

But I could not walk away. What if somebody removed it? What if it was a missing clue to a murder case? I felt responsible to keep it safe till the police arrived.

A young woman was passing by. I stopped her hesitantly and said, “I don’t want to freak you out but there is a skull here. How long has it been lying here?” She is a teacher. She stays close by and uses the road regularly but hadn’t noticed the skull.

She googled the Kannada word for skull (taleburue). She tried to explain our location to a policeman over my phone. We discussed how Netflix shows like ‘Indian Predator: The Butcher of Delhi’ have piqued interest in crime investigation. She left after some time.

Forty minutes later, a police team arrived. A lot of back and forth had transpired — the Basavanagudi police called me to say the park falls under Jayanagar limits and shared a contact; the Jayanagar inspector asked me to call the Siddapura police or the emergency number 112; the Hoysala patrol was trying to figure the location.

I showed the skull to the police. One remarked it was fake. Another, possibly a senior, said ‘no’. A third guessed it was a female skull. Such sightings aren’t common, they told me. Perhaps the skull came up during “some digging work”, the senior concluded. That made me wonder if there was a cemetery nearby.

“Okay, what do you plan to do now?” I enquired. I assumed there would be a super-fast SOP for whodunits but they looked at each other, unsure. “We may throw it,” said one, and asked the others to bring a carry bag to take it along.

On Thursday, I learnt from the Siddapura police inspector that the skull was at their station and they were looking for the person who left it on the transformer plinth.

Experts speak

P Krishnakant, deputy commissioner of police, south division, said citizens should contact the nearest police station if they find something like a skull.

“We will verify where it came from. We take the opinion of forensic doctors, send it for DNA testing, and use it to match it with missing person cases and (explore) undetected murders,” he told Metrolife.

Forensic expert Dr Venkata Raghava S illustrates why this is important: “We once received three gunny bags containing body parts from three spots around Kalasipalya. It belonged to one person, a male, we found on examination and DNA confirmation. A couple had killed the wife’s lover, and dismembered his body.”

What happens if the identity can’t be determined? Dr Venkata suggests that the police could contact the Forensic Science Laboratory Division to record the DNA, or give it to a Forensic Medicine Department of a medical college for preservation, or bury it and mark the site to avoid burying another body on top of it.

Such sightings are rare and mostly emerge during excavations and construction work, he said.