Dead Men Tell Tales by Dr B. Umadathan

Author:Dr B. Umadathan [Dr B. Umadathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins India
Published: 2021-03-31T00:00:00+00:00

21

The Psychiatrist Who Committed Suicide

T he late Sri Krishnan Nair was an active presence in police circles. The DGP was a distinguished police officer, an eloquent speaker and a famous writer. He showered me with brotherly affection and took my opinion on many cases. A postgraduate in English literature, he was involved in literary activities before he passed away in 1999 in Kollam. When I was the forensic medicine professor and police surgeon in Alappuzha, he was the DIG in Ernakulam. A young doctor had died under suspicious circumstances in Aluva. He requested me to examine the spot and do the post-mortem, and so I reached Aluva. Finding the DIG himself present there, I felt that it was an important case. He apprised me of the situation.

Dr Koshy, the man who had died, was a psychiatrist. After completing his postgraduation in Ireland, he was working in a private hospital in Aluva. His wife and children had gone to visit her parents, and when they returned, they found the front door locked. The wife opened the lock with her key. She found the doctor dead in the bedroom. It was alleged that he had been murdered.

When I entered the room, the body had begun to decompose and a foul odour hung about the place. Those who do not know forensic medicine will suspect foul play when they see the differences in the body—the eruptions on the skin, the protruding tongue and bulging eyes, and the change in colour of the skin. This is a normal process that I have described in a previous chapter. I found a bottle of beer and a crystal glass on a table near the cot. Some beer was left in the glass. I could see some white powder in it as well. He must have mixed something in the drink, but as the fingerprint expert hadn’t dusted for prints yet I didn’t touch the glass.

It is an integral part of crime detection to preserve the crime spot untouched. No one must be allowed to touch or move anything. French criminologist Edmond Locard once said that in the physical world, whenever perpetrators enter or leave a crime scene they leave something behind and take something with them. Careful analyses of fingerprints, footprints, hair and blood can all connect the criminal to the crime. For this reason, the spot where the crime has occurred must be carefully guarded so as nothing is lost or added. This rule is applicable to the investigating officers as well.

There was a table and a chair in the doctor’s bedroom, and a lot of medical books. A book on pharmacology lay open on a page that described a sleeping tablet. I saw nearly fifty empty foils of the same tablet in the wastepaper basket near the cot.

After the inquest, the body was moved to the mortuary in Aluva Government Hospital. When I examined the body, I could not find any traces of violence. The abdomen contained traces of white powder, similar to what I had seen in the glass.

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