Representative image of a police van
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Thiruvananthapuram: While policing mostly involved tracing accused in crimes with the help of information from victims or witnesses, the Kerala police is now on a reverse mission of digging out the identity of two victims with the help of the accused, that too in nearly four decades old murders.
On Sunday, the police released the sketch of one of the victims that was prepared on the basis of inputs given by the accused. The accused confirmed that it almost matches with the victim.
Mohammedali, 59, hailing from Vengara in Malappuram, recently confessed to his involvement in two murders that happened in 1986 and 1989 in Kozhikode. Remorse over the death of his elder son and accident suffered by his younger son were the reasons for the confession.
According to Mohammedali, he used to work at a farm land of one Devassy at Koodaranji on the suburbs of Kozhikode while he was 14. At that time, another worker entered into an altercation with him and he pushed him to a nearby canal and ran away. A couple of days later, he came to know that the person was found dead in the canal. The incident occurred in November 1986.
The police verified the old records and found that a youth aged around 20 was found dead in the canal and the case was closed on the assumption that he died due to epilepsy. Since no one claimed the body, it was marked unidentified and was cremated.
As the police were scratching their heads over the revelation, Mohammedali made the second confession that he along with another person killed a man who tried to steal his money at a beach in Kozhikode. As per police records, a person was found dead in the said place in September 1989.
Even as Mohammedali's relatives maintained that Mohammedali was making false claims and he was under treatment for mental illness, Kozhikode district police chief K E Baiju said that the police couldn't ignore his revelations as the incidents he mentioned did happen. Hence, he was arrested and probe is on.
The victim in the 1986 crime was suspected to be one from Kerala-Tamil Nadu border areas in Palakkad district. In the 1989 murder, the police are trying to trace the co-accused Babu alias 'Ganja Babu'.