Kottayam: The job of the police personnel at the lower levels is not envied. Crimes, accidents and suicide cases are regular affairs for them. Often they order labourers to remove or extricate dead bodies from a crime scene. Rarely come occasions when they themselves have to literally handle corpses, even those which are decaying, and this is what exactly happened in the case of EG Vidyadharan, the Sub Inspector of Police at the Erumeli Police Station on the borders of Kerala's Kottayam district.
Vidyadharan became a hero overnight when he climbed a 15-foot tall tree to bring down the four-day-old corpse of a suicide victim at Kanakappalam near Erumeli.
As reported earlier, the local people had turned back from the task of getting the corpse down as the decomposing corpse was emitting a nauseating odour. Someone offered his help demanding a remuneration of Rs. 5,000. It was then the SI himself decided to climb the tree and bring down the body.
Vidyadharan says it was the thought that the corpse was of a human being which prompted him to take the step. The special training he had received 27 years ago at the Police Training Camp in Thrissur had also helped him in this task. He was among the 56 cadets who received special training out of the 200 cadets of the 1992 batch.
For Vidyadharan, a resident of Kombukuthi near Mundakkayam, climbing trees or negotiating tough terrains hardly poses a challenge.
When the dead body was found on the tree in the forest, a big crowd of people had gathered, but when the police asked for help to bring down the body, no one was ready. It was then that the SI took the initiative.
The body was found on a plantation off Erumeli-Vechuchira road.
