After 12 years, body moved from morgue

CHENNAI: For 12 long years, the mortuary at the government general hospital (GH) housed the remains of a body suspected to be that of Mustafa Rashidi, one of the prime accused in the 1995 Chinthadripet bomb blast. But just hours after this scribe made enquiries about the existence of the body, it was moved out by the special investigation team (SIT) of the CB-CID (Crime Branch-CID) late on Monday evening.
Confirming the news, Dr A R Valarmathi, resident medical officer, GH, said, "The SIT team from the CB-CID have come and collected the body from the mortuary. Though the requisition form stated that the investigation wasn't over yet, the team said that there was no requirement for the body to be kept in the mortuary any longer."
This lends an intriguing twist to the 12-year case which can be traced back to the blast that ripped through the Hindu Munnani office in Chintadripet on Tamil New Year's day in 1995, where Rashidi, the suspected suicide bomber killed ���Bible' Shanmugham, district organising secretary of the Munnani, while blowing himself up.
Spanning more than a decade, the case has undergone several rounds of investigations but no chargesheet has been filed till date and hence the case has never come up for trial. Unclaimed bodies are usually not kept in hospital mortuaries for more ten days, according to a government order dated 26.06.2001. Due to the curious circum-stances of this case, the remains of the alleged suicide bomber were preserved at the GH mortuary all these years.
Explaining the delay, Narendar Paul Singh, ADGP-SIT, told TOI that the SIT had established the body to be that of Mustafa Rashidi, a native of Kanyakumari, in 2000-2001, but the investigating officer ordered a DNA test.
The team sent blood samples to the Centre for DNA Finger-printing and Diagnostics in Hyderabad. Though the state forensic lab confirmed that the sample belonged to Mustafa Rashidi, investigations have continued. "You can't close the case unless the identity of the suspect is fixed. We need to lay our hands on legally sustainable evidence that will stand in the court of law. You never know when you'll get lucky," said the ADGP.
Obviously till late on Monday evening, no breakthrough had been made but the body no longer remains in the minus -10 degree Celsius confines of the mortuary.