Kerala police have identified a victim in a 1986 murder case after the accused confessed, revealing details of a crime committed over three decades ago in Koodaranji.
Key Points
- Muhammadali confessed to killing two people in 1986 when he was a teenager.
- One of the victims has been identified as Mohanan, a native of Kannur district.
- Muhammadali claimed he killed Mohanan in self-defence after an alleged sexual assault attempt.
- The victim was identified based on a sketch and details from missing persons' cases.
- Police are continuing the investigation to gather more evidence against the accused in the 1986 murder case.
Police said on Tuesday that one of the two people whom Muhammadali, a man in his fifties, confessed last year to killing in 1986 when he was a teenager, has been identified as a native of Kannur.
Muhammadali in July last year confessed to having killed two persons back in 1986 when he was a teenager.
Victim Identified Nearly a Year Later
Nearly a year later, police identified one of his victims as Mohanan, a native of Iritty in Kannur district.
A senior police officer said that then 14-year-old Muhammadali had killed Mohanan in self defence as the older man tried to sexually assault him.
"In the scuffle, the victim was pushed into a nearby waterbody and then held underwater by force till he drowned," the officer said.
Details of the 1986 Incident
The incident had occurred in the quiet village of Koodaranji, which is under Thiruvambady police station limits here, and an FIR had been registered last year following the confession, he said.
Back then, the police had treated the death as natural as the victim was known to have epilepsy and no one came forward to identify the body.
The victim was identified based on a rough sketch made by the police from the details given by Muhammadali in his confession and it was compared with the details of various closed missing persons' cases from the mid-1980s in the Malabar region, the officer said.
Ongoing Investigation and Confession Motive
Police also found that Mohanan's relatives had no information about him for years.
The investigation is continuing and the police are trying to collect more evidence against the accused, he said.
The officer said that the second murder the accused confessed to occurred elsewhere, and the Thiruvambady police are not investigating it.
The accused, in his confession, had told the police that the burden of guilt had become too heavy to carry, especially after personal tragedies struck his own family.
His elder son died, and his younger son was seriously injured in an accident. It was then, he said, that he realised he had to come clean. He informed the police that he couldn't sleep after the tragedy struck his family.
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