Could the Ernakulum police have saved at least one of the two women who were allegedly killed with their body parts chopped as part of “black magic” in Elanthoor village of Kerala’s Pathanamthitta district?
Amid the horrifying facts emerging from what is being called the “Elanthoor Human Sacrifice”, it has now emerged that the first of the two victims was killed on June 8, while the second from Kadavanthra was murdered on September 26.
The 50-year-old from Kalady in Ernakulam went missing in June. Her daughter had filed a missing person’s complaint with the Kalady Police station under the Ernakulam Rural police on August 27.
Originally from Alappuzha, the 50-year-old sold lottery tickets in Ernakulam for a living. Her daughter, who worked in Uttar Pradesh, realized something was amiss only in August. However, even after the complaint, the Ernakulam Rural police did little.
It was only after the Kadavanthara police got a similar complaint on September 27 that another lottery vendor – a 42-year-old – had gone missing a day ago that they swung into action. The police team led by ACP Jayakumar got a crucial lead in less than 24 hours.
On October 11, Bhagaval Singh, a local massage therapist and a “traditional healer”, his wife, Laila, 59, both natives of Pathanamthitta, and Rasheed alias Mohammed Shafi, who also introduced himself as a “traditional healer” to Singh, were arrested in connection with the murders. Shafi, the mastermind, is said to have suggested to Singh and Laila that eating cooked human body parts would “preserve youth”, sources said.
CRACKING THE SECOND CASE
The police found that the last tower location of the 42-year-old’s mobile phone was near Thiruvalla in Pathanamthitta, some 100 km south of Kochi. On questioning her friends, the police came to know that a man, Shafi, had invited them to go to Thiruvalla with him.
The CCTV footage showed the woman getting into a Mahindra Scorpio at 10.15 am on September 26. The vehicle was traced to Shafi. Soon, the police team quizzed him. However, Shafi denied any links with the case. The police let him go, but the surveillance was on. They traced a series of phone calls between the missing woman and Shafi and the tower location of his phone matched that of the woman at the time she went missing. He was then taken into custody. Soon the couple, Singh and Laila, was taken into custody from Elanthoor and brought to Kochi.
The three accused later confessed that they had “sacrificed” another woman in a similar manner months ago, said police.
WHAT THE ERNAKULAM POLICE SAID
There are accusations that if the Ernakulam Rural police were aggressive in investigating the first complaint, Shafi would have been on the radar much earlier, thus preventing the murder of another woman in the same manner in 30 days.
“Unfortunately, the Ernakulam Rural Police could not establish any link between the victim and Shafi. We were on the case, but the investigation hit a wall. Neither could we make any progress tracking her mobile phone tower location nor could we find anyone whom the victim had contacted,” Vivek Kumar, District Police Chief (Ernakulam Rural), told the media on Monday.
He added, “In between, we came to know that she was into lottery sales in Kochi city, but even that lead didn’t prove fruitful.”