'Why did you do this to my Swathi,' father breaks down during identification parade

Chennai: As Swathi's father approached his daughter's killer during the third round of identification parade inside the Puzhal prison, he could not control himself. Santhanagopalkrishan grabbed the suspect by hand and cried asking ‘why did you do this to my daughter?. You killed my daughter and now I am inside a prison doing all these.’ As the father of the victim sobbed, the suspect stood there moist-eyed.

The process of identification parade had started earlier in the day with jail officials presenting as many as 35 inmates, who shared similarity in appearance with Ramkumar.

According jail source, the magistrate selected 10 people from the lot. Unlike other cases, the magistrate had a very peculiar problem in this case. The actual suspect had a cut and stitch mark on his neck and his image with such a mark was very familiar to everybody, including the two witnesses.

Ramkumar was allowed to choose his position in the line of 10 men. The officials first thought that they would be able to cover the injury marks with towels or just 'Band Aid'. But later they decided to put cotton on everybody's neck and had it covered with 'Band Aid'.

During the first round, Swathi's father had initial doubts in zeroing in on Ramkumar, though he did correctly spot him. But Shivakumar, the shopkeeper at the Nungambakkam station, identified the suspect with no hesitation in all the three rounds.

During second round, everybody wore red shirts and both witnesses identified the suspect easily. It was during the third round that Santhanagopalan lost control over his emotions and broke down.