Be [very] careful what you wish for ...

Continuing from the previous blog: 

We had left our protagonist Gokul in possession of his wife Anuradha’s confession to her extra-marital dalliance and contemplating the imponderables – getting rid of his wife, hanging on to his dear two-year old daughter, squaring things with his father in law who was an ex-cop, getting together with Latha, Latha’s husband conundrum and so on.

 

First move, Gokul created another fake but convincing Facebook id of ASHA the astrologer. [Remember, he had been very successful with the fake identity of a ‘Baba” and obtained his wife’s confession of her affair?] He coined ASHA as an acronym for Astrology, Spirituality, Humility, Attention. This profile Asha also managed to gain the confidence of Anuradha over a series of emails. ‘Asha’ convinced Anuradha that if she posed nude with her paramour (student lover) and sent the photographs, she would perform a yagna (a fire-ritual) over them that would render Gokul a silent spectator and she could freely continue her love life without the hassle of a divorce, child custody battles and so on. Around end-2013, ‘Asha’ received photos of his wife with her lover in a shower in a hotel room. Anuradha had booked the room for arranging these photographs for ‘Asha.’ This is how Gokul managed a plethora of incriminating evidence against his wife, Anuradha.

 

Meanwhile, Gokul kept visiting Bengaluru to meet Latha. Finally, in 2014, he managed a transfer to Bengaluru and also took up residence in the same housing complex as Latha. The two families became friends, so much so that Gokul managed to get a duplicate key to the house of Latha and her husband, Saju Jose.

 

On June 27, 2015, Gokul, as ‘Asha,’ convinced his wife Anuradha to get thoroughly inebriated so that she would become eligible and receptive for the Mahayagna (grand fire-ritual). Anuradha consumed more than half a bottle of whiskey. Then Gokul murdered his wife by hitting her on the back of her head with a metal Ganesha idol. Mission accomplished, he went to sleep. After a short while, he got up, checked on the body of his wife and suspecting that she might still be alive, again bashed her on the forehead brutally and repeatedly with the idol to ensure that she was dead. He passed it off as an accident/suicide. Gokul had rubbed her head against a table to look like she had hit the table while falling. Around 4 AM, he started calling family, relatives and friends to inform them that there was a tragic accidental death. Although the local Police station was suspicious, his father-in-law (Anuradha’s father), receiving all the emails and photographs of Anuradha in compromising position from ‘Baba’ and ‘Asha’ was convinced that his own daughter was of loose character and actually vicious. Gokul must be having tremendous convincing powers and his father-in-law was certain that it was an accident/suicide. In fact, as the father-in-law had been a Deputy Superintendent of Police and argued with the local Police against any other theory, the case was closed as a suicide.

 

Although Gokul had managed to get close to Latha and her husband, he had not yet been successful in getting her to resume a full-scale romance with him or leave her husband, Saju Jose. Gokul created a fake identity in the name of Saju on Facebook and posted messages calling for jihad in the name of ISIS. Gokul also created for himself a third identity as the Archbishop of Bengaluru and started sending letters to Latha. In the initial letters, the ‘Archbishop’ advised Latha not to leave Saju. This earned the trust and respect of Latha who didn’t suspect anything. However, somewhere down the line in the exchange of letters, the ‘Archbishop’ started advising Latha to divorce Saju. The ‘Archbishop’ also wrote to Saju informing him that Latha had mentioned in her confessionals regarding her desire to leave Saju. Despite the ‘Archbishop’’s advice, Saju was not willing for the divorce.

 

Not succeeding in the ‘Archbishop’ ploy, Gokul bought a SIM card and started sending WhatsApp messages to Saju in the name of ‘Salman’ belonging to a terrorist organization. Using the duplicate key to Saju’s house, he managed to plant a lot of incriminating literature in Saju’s house. He also photocopied Saju’s documents (passport, photographs, etc.) and, using them, procured a SIM in Saju’s name. After all this was in place, he tracked the flights through the internet and sent these alarming messages to the airports from a mobile with the SIM in Saju’s name. The details of the flights were so specific that the authorities were bound to seriously act upon the messages. What he was counting on was that Saju would be promptly arrested and put away for life, leaving him and Latha to start a new life together.

 

As Saju happened to be out of town, Latha approached Gokul to accompany her to the Police station when summoned. He accompanied her faithfully and hid the phone with Saju’s SIM in the car. This location of the phone and the wi-fi he had used for sending the WhatsApp messages eventually gave him away. The murder charge was added to the original SUASCA charge.

 

I examined Gokul in Police custody at length and was amazed at the depravity of an extremely diabolic and intelligent mind. I was also impressed by the brilliance of the investigative skills of a young SP level officer of Bengaluru and his consummate interrogation technique. These were times when there was robust and seamless professional cooperation amongst Police forces of different states and the Centre – unlike now, when there are unending cop-vs-cop wars. 

Well, Gokul wanted to eliminate his wife and implicate his sweetheart’s husband and set about it meticulously over a period of five years. He got his wish and nearly got away with it but I don’t think he was any the happier for it. Last heard, Latha was going to testify against him in Court and hers might be the clinching evidence. Be careful what you wish for … because you just might get it! 

Be careful what you wish for ...

 

Every Police officer, in a career spanning over three decades, gets exposed to a large variety of crimes and criminals. In my entire career, the most diabolical crime I came across was not the Purulia arms drop case. It occurred when I wasn’t in direct Policing either. The investigation didn’t even involve me, except very peripherally.

In 2015, I was heading the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS), the regulator mandated to ensure against and counter any unlawful interference when you fly – hijacking, bombing, armed attacks and so on involving aviation. On September 4 of that year, a Friday, I was visiting Kolkata on tour and a service colleague hosted a dinner for me and some other colleagues at Tolly Club. It was fairly late when the party wound up. Basking in the afterglow of the enjoyable evening replete with food, laughter and banter, I was about to doze off at the Guest House when I was jolted awake by the phone ringing after midnight – every Police officer’s regular nightmare. Bengaluru airport terminal manager had received a series of disturbing WhatsApp messages. Seeing the messages, the party feel-good and any thoughts of sleep just went out the window. Here is an assorted sample:

 

·       ‘Islamic State Wins. Air France to Paris and Haj Flight to Jeddah will be blasted on air.'

·       ‘Third target for today: Lufthansa to Germany.'

·       ‘IS wins, will spoil India. Stop if you can Allah.'

·       ‘Get ready to see the fireworks above the sky today.'

·       ‘Three bombs kept at Airport Cargo sector are ready to blast at 3 am, IS wins.'

·       ‘You can't trace any of our men, at least try to trace the bomb.'

·       ‘Not for today, it will be tomorrow at 3 am.'

 

This was followed by similar messages at Delhi airport. The messages and some phone calls to various call centres started at around 1 AM and continued till about 5 AM on Saturday morning. They mentioned that six different and specified international flights taking off from Bangaluru and Delhi airports would be blown up and there would also be an explosion in the cargo area of Bengaluru airport. The messages and calls were very pinpointed and gave many details of the concerned flights. Interestingly, all these six flights had either just taken off or were preparing to do so. They included flights of Air France, Jet Airways, Cathay Pacific, Lufthansa, Saudi Arabian Airlines and Swiss Air.

 

My entire night was spent in tracking, supervising and organizing sterilisation of the planes, passengers, cargo and catering. Three of the flights were already just airborne and were recalled back. The remaining three flights were isolated on the ground. The elaborate procedure of disembarkation of passengers, unloading of luggage, thorough checking and sterilization of aircrafts, passengers, cargo and catering, etc. began. At the best of times, the drill takes at least about four hours. With so many flights under bunched threats, it was an endless nightmare. Total loss to aviation industry because of this was estimated at above Rs. 8 cr., and this was not counting the loss of the time value of the (mostly high-value) passengers because of the cascading delays caused by the disruption.

 

The Commissioner of Police, Bengaluru was an IPS batchmate and a good friend. I called him and requested him for registering the case under the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against Safety of Civil Aviation Act (SUASCA) and for focused investigation so that BCAS could later pick up the investigation after the necessary notification. This particular Act is very stringent carrying a penalty of life-imprisonment and BCAS had achieved a good conviction rate under the Act in other cases. While the incident and countering it constituted my bread-and-butter in that particular assignment, for a city Commissioner of Police with myriad demands on his time and energy, I wasn’t sure how much priority the case would get. I’m afraid I nagged him quite a bit. Two days later, he informed me that the case had been cracked. He also told me that it was not a simple case of bomb threats but the threat calls were actually a by-product, a small link in an elaborate crime of extraordinarily gruesome proportions. It involved a grisly murder as well.

 

I flew out to Bengaluru post-haste and examined the arrested accused person at length. What I learnt stunned me.

 

After registration of the case, Bengaluru Police traced the telephone no. from which the messages and calls had originated to one software techie named Saju Jose and its location at residences in upmarket Fernhill Gardens in HSR layout, Sector VI, Bengaluru. However, Saju was not even in the city at the time the messages were sent. Police called his wife, Latha (name changed) for examination and she had no clue as to the messages or even the phone no.. However, tracking the location of the phone, the Police found that the movement of the phone was tallying with her two visits to the Police station but did not tally with any other movement of hers. After this, they closely examined a person named Gokul M G (37) who had accompanied her to the Police station on both the occasions as her husband was not around. Even though Gokul claimed complete ignorance, after sustained interrogation and a check on the wi-fi connection he had used to send the WhatsApp messages, a five-year diabolical plot involving complicated romance, spectacular intrigue, a brutal murder and the final denouement of six international flights being subjected to serious disruption came to light with Gokul as the criminal extraordinaire.

 

Gokul and and Latha were classmates since Class 12 until completing their Engineering course in Thrissur, Kerala in 2007. They had been intimate then but after the graduation, Gokul moved to Delhi and Latha went to Thiruchirapalli, both for higher studies. In Delhi, Gokul met another girl, Anuradha, a Ranchi based girl, fell in love and married her in 2009. Both worked in the IT sector. In the same year, Gokul’s ex-flame, Latha also tied the knot with another techie, Saju Jose, in an arranged marriage.

 

Soon after marriage to Gokul, Anuradha left her techie job and took up a teaching job. Gokul confessed that he used to work from 9 AM to 11 PM and, probably frustrated, Anuradha started having an affair with a student of hers. Gokul found this out when he chanced upon some lewd messages exchanged between the student and Anuradha. In 2011, Gokul came across his old flame, Latha on Facebook and resumed contact.

 

His wife Anuradha being devoted to Shirdi Sai Baba, Gokul created a fake email id of a ‘Baba.’ As ‘Baba,’ he started sending emails to Anuradha, gained her confidence and slowly got her to confess to her affair with her student. He must have been enormously convincing. In his guise as “Baba,” Gokul advised Anuradha to discontinue her extramarital affair. She did, but again after three months, she resumed her relationship. Obviously, she kept the ‘Baba’ informed about the twists and turns of her dalliances and emotions every step of the way.

 

Now Gokul was furious. He decided to get away from his wife and get his old flame Latha back in his life. These are not simple things. Or easy. The wife doesn’t just disappear. There is the whole matter of child custody – they had a two year old daughter whom Gokul did not want to part with. The father-in-law was an ex-Deputy Superintendent of Police. There was the small inconvenience of Latha not willing to get back with him and her husband not agreeing to a divorce either. However, in Gokul’s mind, these were minor errors in taste and everything can and would fall into place. Given time. He set about meticulously eliminating all the obstacles in the way, getting rid of his wife, avoiding a murder rap, squaring things with his in-laws, winning back Latha, the problem of Latha’s husband and so on. In his convoluted but systematic mind, these were just steps to be solved in an interesting puzzle and he seemed to foresee zero problems in getting to the end-point. It would not happen immediately. It would take time, enormous time – five years in this case – but, as they say, the vulture is a patient bird …

[To be concluded]