Three murders in quick succession rattle Kochi residents

Three murders in less than a week have rattled the residents of the city while setting the alarm bells ringing for the law enforcement agencies.

In the first incident, a man was stabbed to death following an altercation at a hotel near Town Hall on the night of August 10. Another man met with a similar fate under the South Overbridge in the wee hours of August 14. And then two days later, the body of a 23-year-old was found wrapped and shoved into a duct in a 16th floor apartment at Edachira near Kakkanad.

The graver concern for law enforcement agencies is the increasing involvement of drugs in heinous crimes like the alleged killing at Edachira.

“Crime is getting aggravated with the involvement of drugs. The extent of the problem [drugs] is much greater than what we are catching. We are capturing just the tip of the iceberg. Our main strategy is to go up the supply chain layers to reach the source,” said C.H. Nagaraju, District Police Chief (Kochi City).

However, drug dealers, aware of such a threat, ensure that the suppliers or persons down the supply chain do not know each other. The problem is further complicated by the use of the Dark Web and cryptocurrency that mask even financial transactions. Also, some of the drug couriers intercepted in the city originated from abroad.

P.V. Aleyas, Deputy Excise Commissioner, Ernakulam, said drugs were indeed pushing up the crime rate. Of particular concern is the sudden surge in MDMA, a premium synthetic drug, as a sex stimulant. “Unless there is an insider tip-off emanating from trade war, it is hard to intercept the movement of these drugs,” he said.

Mahitha Vipinachandran, a school counsellor with the Department of Women and Child Development, said there was an increasing vulnerability to drug addiction among youngsters compared to the pre-pandemic times. “The addiction strips them of an empathetic mind and boosts their criminal tendency. Films and games eulogizing violence also serve as bad influences. Being exposed to the addictive behaviour of parents during the pandemic also gave them the impression that it was acceptable,” she said.

Honey G. Alexander, Deputy Director of Education, Ernakulam, said an awareness campaign against addiction with the support of the district panchayat was set to be rolled out in schools across the district, subjected to the approval of the Education department. “We have also set up anti-addiction clubs in schools under the Vimukthi programme of Excise and Our Responsibility to Children campaigns in the more vulnerable schools. Instructions were issued ahead of the academic year to set up school protection groups as well,” she said.