|
To tell murder from suicide
 Post-mortem is usually conducted in cases of murder, suicide and suspicious deaths. Often, the revelations of the post-mortem report helps police to crack murder cases.
This is what happened in a recent case registered as a suicide by the police. But post-mortem revealed a vital clue which led to the detection of a gruesome murder.
At Anna Nagar in Chennai, Ravikumar, a bachelor and a famous dance master, had employed his friend Sivakumar as his personal assistant. On October 30, on a complaint from the neighbours, police went to Ravikumar’s house and broke it open only to find him dead on the bed.
A glass filled with liquid, which contained some poisonous substance, was also found on a table near the bed. Police confirmed that it was a case of suicide and sent the body for post-mortem.
But post-mortem report raised some conflicting questions for the investigating authorities. It revealed that Ravikumar had died the previous night after consuming Dosai that had been poisoned. If Ravikumar had taken the poison by mixing it in Dosai, why should he take it again with a glass of poisonous liquid?
Why his personal assistant Sivakumar disappeared all of a sudden?
 When policemen had checked Ravikumar’s house intensively, it was found that Sivakumar had used the dead man’s cheque book and drawn Rs 60,000 on the day of Ravikumar's death. The police smelt a rat. So they arrested
Sivakumar.
During interrogation he confessed that he had been handling the bank transactions of Ravikumar and was tempted to get his hands on all his money by bumping him off.
The night before the dancer’s death, he had asked his assistant to get him something to eat from hotel. Using this oppurtunity, Sivakumar had mixed some poison in Dosai. In order not to make Ravikumar suspicious, he sat and ate along with him.
He plotted his next step, to befool everyone, including the police, he left a glass of poisoned liquid near Ravikumar's bed.
It was only the post-mortem report that gave this vital clues for the police to understand that it was a clear case of murder. If not for that report, the case would have been closed as a case of suicide.
Normally, in suicide cases, post-mortem gives vital clues to detect if they are murder cases. In several cases of hanging, the injuries on the body reversed the facts and police found them to be murders: the culprits would have beaten the person to death and then hanged them to make it seem like a suicide.
So, in all murders, suicides and suspicious deaths, people should not hesitate to agree to a post-mortem, as such examination might reveal several crucial information about the death.
But there is a general tendency among people to avoid such crude examination, after a sad death, of their loved ones. After all, one should remember that even the body of late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was disposed of only after a post-mortem even though he died a horrible death.
Harvey
|
