Three back-to-back murders shook residents of Kochi

Three murders in less than a week have left residents of the city stunned, setting alarm bells for law enforcement agencies.

In the first incident, a man was stabbed to death after an altercation at a hotel near the town hall on the night of 10 August. A similar situation happened to another person under the South Overbridge in the early hours of August 14. And then two days later, in a 16th-floor apartment in Edachira, near Kakkanad, the body of a 23-year-old man was found wrapped and found in a duct.

Of grave concern to law enforcement agencies is the increasing involvement of drugs in heinous crimes such as the alleged murder in Edachira.

“Crimes are on the rise due to drug involvement. The extent of the problem [drugs] What we are holding is much more than that. We are just capturing the tip of the iceberg. Our main strategy is to move up the layers of the supply chain to reach the source,” said CH Nagaraju, district police chief (Kochi city).

However, drug dealers aware of such danger ensure that suppliers or persons in the supply chain do not know each other. The problem is further complicated by the use of dark web and cryptocurrencies which also hide financial transactions. In addition, some of the drug couriers caught in the city have come from abroad.

Ernakulam Deputy Excise Commissioner PV Elias said that the drugs are actually increasing the crime rate. Of particular concern is the sudden boom in MDMA, a premium synthetic drug, as a sex stimulant. “Unless there is some insider information from the trade war, it is difficult to stop the movement of these drugs,” he said.

Mahita Vipinchandran, a school counselor at the Department of Women and Child Development, said the susceptibility to drug addiction among youth is increasing compared to the pre-pandemic period. “Drug addiction strips them of a sympathetic mind and increases their criminal tendencies. Movies and games that glorify violence also serve as bad influences. Exposure to the addictive behavior of parents during the pandemic also gave them the impression that it was acceptable,” she said.

Ernakulam Deputy Director of Education Honey G Alexander said that under the approval of the Education Department, an awareness campaign against drugs would be conducted in schools across the district in collaboration with the Zilla Panchayat. “We have also set up drug de-addiction clubs in schools under the Vimukti program of the Excise and Our Responsibility to Children campaign in more vulnerable schools. Instructions were also issued to set up school security groups before the academic year,” she said.