By Pro Bono Publico
The stark reality is that an old, sick, wealthy,bachelor citizen isn’t safe in Dehradun, if he has covetous and heartless close relatives living with him posing as his caretakers.
This is about a real life case but names are being withheld. Similarly some facts and events have been left out both for keeping it short and for getting straight to the point of why and what make out a heinous act and how the Police have reacted to it.
December is the coldest month of winter and even otherwise it’s a merciless month for the sick and the elderly. In recent times, December of the year 2012 was the coldest; especially the days of December 12th and 13th, 2012. The victim’s elder brother recalls he burnt logs in the fire-places to keep themselves and their pets warm. On 13th evening of 2012, it was already quite dark around 5 PM. When drops of rain too started falling amidst lightning and sound of thunder he says the pets abandoned their walk and scurried home for its warmth. The cold was ominous. If we recall how the streets this December 2018, were almost deserted quite early on in the evenings it can be imagined how cold and lonely the streets must have been six years ago.
That very night of December 13th 2012, this old and sick gentleman was killed fatally hit by an “unknown vehicle” at a lonely spot of a highway, miles away from the warmth and comforts of the victim’s kothi. The place and time of his death, near mid-night were recorded by the Police.
So what took him there on that bitterly cold night in such foul weather and who took him there? Even animals sought warmth and shelter. The bigger question is even more startling; a married younger sister and her strapping young son were living with their bachelor brother in the kothi supposedly taking care of him but they never bothered why he was not returning home; why was it so? Neither she nor her son bothered to look for him nor reported it to the Police to take their help to get him safely home. Nor did this married sister and son inform the victim’s elder brother and his wife who lived separately from the above kothi barely fifty yards away. Nor did they seek help from their neighbours.
The death was revealed by the Police to the victim’s brother the next day (Dec 14th, 2012) around noon. It is astonishing that all this while the married sister, husband and son trio kept a studied silence! As it happened the Police traced the victim’s identity through sheer chance, otherwise he would have died nameless.
The elder brother who had lived apart admits that he had come to accept the initial untruth which was cleverly peddled by his married younger sister that the his younger brother – the victim, “had gone for a walk” while in an imprudent state of mind of his Bipolar Disorder and unfortunately “met with an accident”!
It was later on that the elder brother confronted the Police with a case of suspicious death of an infirm, elderly person, with a motive of benefiting from his violent, untimely death. However he did so later only when incriminating facts came to his knowledge; a string of circumstantial evidence, direct evidence, statements of witnesses and the motive of gaining immediate benefits from brother’s the death by the sister and her family came to be revealed.
It came to his notice later that the married sister and her son had coerced, importuned the sick brother when he was in a Bipolar “manic” state to forcibly sign away all his wealth to ultimately benefit her and her family. So the conclusion of foul play sprang to the mind that any caring person would have been alarmed if a sick person went missing on a bitter cold evening and night. But the heartless, silence and cruel uncaring attitude could only occur if there was a conspiracy that the “removal” of their brother was to gain all his wealth. That appears as the sole reason for this wretched, heinous act of commission or of deliberate omission or both. The poignant and revealing part is that this younger, married sister along with her son had taken upon themselves as being the caring and loving siblings to their brother.
It was imperative that the Police gave a fitting and humane response. But the Police have reacted in an outrageous manner by doing a cover-up. The Police were given twenty-one or more points to probe pointing prima facie to foul play. But the Police for what seems an unbecoming reason chose just one point to probe. This was whether the married sister (the accused) contacted the Police to seek help of “missing brother” that fateful night or not, or even thereafter and whether she made efforts to find out where he was and bring him home safely.
The Police have recorded what this sister being accused by the elder brother has admitted to them. Firstly, she admited to the Police that her brother was a patient of Bipolar Disorder and suffered depression. That he went out for walks. And that, when her brother did not return in time, she “tried dialling 100 but could not connect”. But this was all that she “did” to contact the Police which actually meant she did nothing to contact the Police. However, the Police have accepted this as part of her “relentless efforts” to contact the Police.
It is glaringly clear that if ever there was prevarication on the part of a suspect and the Police, this must beat them all. Why the Police have glossed over the fact that this sister and her family knew fully well the brother was an ailing person and it was bitterly cold December night so was this just “trying to dial 100” enough? Next the Police are silent if they questioned her if she tried taking help from neighbours including the elder brother next door.
The Police cover-up goes further. The accused sister is recorded as telling the Police that she presumed her brother had gone to spend the night with some friend of his and would return of his own accord! What an unacceptable presumption? Did she try phoning the friends? No; the Police are silent. Did she try phoning the deceased brother’s childhood friend who has incriminating facts about this sister and family as reported to the Police in the 21 point complaint taken note of by the then DGP? Again, it is no. The Police have just accepted this heartlessly unacceptable bit of “wishful thinking” and cruel prevarication. And have brazenly concluded that these statements constituted her “relentless efforts” to trace her missing brother.
All this has been dittoed by the Police brass; it seems to them to be a particularly “humanitarian bit of investigation” by their “Human in Khaki” Police! On top of it, the “investigators” think the complainant has all made up the Twenty-one Points Plus case without even probing one bit of it.
Regrettably it’s a sordid example of unfulfilled expectations from “Human in Khaki” Police or the earlier avatar of “Mitra Police”. It is an outrageous response from the Police to what is a heinous crime that a real sister who has taken a calculated step to make herself and and her family an ultimate beneficiary of her elder brother’s wealth doesn’t stir a finger to locate him when he supposedly goes out for a “walk” in bitter cold weather and fails to return home safe. And all the while she and her family posed as their ailing brother’s care-takers.
Pro Bono Publico therefore acts in public intrest to remind a serving, top-most ranking Police Officer in Uttarakhand that he has raised great expectations from the Police in his book “Human in Khaki” of ushering in a radical, almost a revolutionary change in solving “land grab” cases that take ages in Civil Courts. His book expounds his methodology that the Police look closely at all the doings of the land-grabber which then serves as the proverbial “can opener” to expose criminal action of the land-grabber. The Police then close in to ensure all round justice. But as so often is the case high hopes are raised by top-people in authority through words ringing with conviction but are not realised in action.
