Thrissur: It was a misunderstanding that led Kerala police's plainclothesmen to nab Martin Joseph, the accused in the Kochi flat rape case, from his hideout on Thursday.
Joseph, accused of raping and torturing his live-in partner in his rented accommodation at Marine Drive in Kochi, was arrested after an elaborate hunt involving policemen and several Kiralur residents on Thursday.
Locals join search
On strong suspicion that Joseph had been hiding in Kiralur near Mundur, police formed teams of 10 local residents under each police officer and started a door-to-door enquiry. They went around with Joseph’s photograph, enquiring if anyone had seen the man.
A house owner at Chemmanchira nonchalantly replied in the negative when a team headed by shadow police sub-inspector P M Rafi enquired about Joseph after showing the photograph. Unknown to the team, the accused was watching them from the house.
The chase begins
Seeing the team, Joseph mistook that plainclothesmen had surrounded the house and made a dash for the backdoor without a second thought. The officer and team, meanwhile, were about to leave after their enquiry elicited a negative result, when they saw a man darting out of the backdoor without any apparent reason.
The team also gave chase and soon identified Joseph. He crossed a nearby field and hid in the marshes in a thicketed area.
It later became known that Joseph had been staying in the house of his distant relative for two days.
The breakthrough
Earlier, the breakthrough for the hunt for Joseph came when police identified his location based on WhatsApp on the phone the man had been using. The identification took investigators to Joseph’s friend at Kakkanad.
Investigators soon tracked his movement towards Thrissur. Police later said the friend drove Joseph in the latter’s BMW car to Kiralur via Mundur. After dropping Joseph off, the accomplice hid the car in another friend’s house. Investigators have confiscated the BMW vehicle, along with another car and two bikes.
Joseph, meanwhile, was unaware that his friends had landed in police custody. He took a bike out in search of his friends, helping police to almost pinpoint his location.
An exhaustive search by the Medical College Station Police Inspector and a 25-member team did not yield any result on the first day.
The police drew up a better strategy on day two and roped in local residents familiar with the area. The strategy succeeded in arresting Joseph.
