Cops skipped food and sleep; survived on tea, coffee and sweat

CHENNAI: “Kudos to TN Police”, said Sujith Kumar, a HR officer at the Infosys, who had worked closely with the cops probing the brutal slaying of his colleague Swathi. His Facebook post Saturday morning, in response to the arrest of the alleged killer Ram Kumar, showed that a large team of police investigators had spent most of their lives over the past one week in Infosys campus speaking to the many employees and pouring through heaps of matter in the hope of getting some clue that could nab the culprit. “Yesterday I reached home late and when I saw the breaking news of the suspect being arrested I sent an SMS to the officer I was working with, to inquire if that was confirmed and my phone beeped in a while and it read, ‘Yes sir.’ That was a huge sigh of relief and after a long time, I slept very peacefully. Kudos to TN Police”, said the FB post.

It said, “During the investigation, they will ask many witnesses to go have lunch/dinner but I did notice many of these officers just dragged their day by sipping few cups of tea and coffee. At times, I would be leaving their office late into the night. Only after that, they would have their review meeting. Also, by the next morning, the officers will be ready for their next round of investigation. They took utmost care to ensure the identity of people whom they investigated was always protected. While the investigation was going on, there were many views in some section of the media, but that didn’t bother the Cops, and their focus was to nab the culprit”.

Sujith’s post is a huge plume in Police Commissioner T K Rajendran’s hat. “Some of the best police officers were handpicked for this case and was truly amazed by their dedication and patience in solving the case. Their only focus was to pick on those small clues and the way prepared the witness encouraging them to speak was simply amazing”, he said in his FB post. Reflecting on the tough ways of police life, the HR exec said many of the investigators took the Swathi slaying as a personal insult.

“One officer mentioned this to me a few days back at around 1’o clock in the night, ‘Sir, in our terms this is a brutal murder and that too of an unarmed girl. We have to nab him at all cost else public will live in fear. It’s not a good sign for working women’. Over the past one week since the murder, Infosys has been agog with the colleagues sharing their grief and anguish over the sad event, besides of course the hoping for an early nabbing of the killer. “But I did not expect they would catch him this quick. We must congratulate the police”, said a woman techie at Infosys’s Mahindra City campus, who recalled she had seen Swathi “a few times though I have not personally interacted with her”.