Shifting the focus on the SIT : Litmus test for the State cops
- Sangai Express Editorial :: April 9, 2013 -

The focus should now shift to the Special Investigation Team just so that its acronym SIT is not mistaken for its literal meaning, sit.

Just a word of caution at the risk of sounding overly sceptical. Not the first time that the State police has been put on test and the question is whether this would end on a disappointing note or not.

How the police or the SIT rise to the occasion will determine whether Ningombam Satyabhama will be just another figure in the list of women being found killed under highly questionable circumstances or whether the case will be taken to its logical conclusion.

By all accounts it does not look like Satyabhama met a natural death.

The suspicion of the people, especially her near and dear ones and the JAC formed in connection with her death, seem convinced that she was done to death, rather murdered, and there is no reason to dismiss their suspicion at the moment. No sign that it was a hit and run case, nothing to indicate that she took her own life.

The mark detected on the throat of the late young woman should tell a significant story. It is this which the police or more specifically the SIT would be expected to unravel and come to a satisfying conclusion. Not an easy task obviously and all the more reason not to treat the matter lightly.

This is where professionalism should step in. Just how well equipped is the State police force to deal with cases like this, is the natural question that follows.

This question is important in the light of the fact that all the modernisation drive and the crores of rupees expended on the State police have all been counter-insurgency specific.

It is not bullet proof vehicles and sophisticated weapons which will solve cases like these but the application of the mind as well as back up technical support to be able to work out such details as when the victim died, what types of weapons were used in the killing, detecting finger prints, footprints or bootprints, tyre prints etc. Nothing as yet to suggest that medical science has been utilised to its optimum level to solve crimes.

Policing is not only about counter-insurgency. This is not to say that the police should not be equipped well to counter the threats posed by militancy but then again it would be a fallacy to understand policing only through the prism of countering the activities of the militants.

This is a fundamental fact, but unfortunately a fundamental fact which has blown over the heads of the policy makers of the State. The past does not paint a rosy picture.

Two of the most high profile murder cases to have rocked the State in the last ten years remain unsolved.

In 2003, the conscience of Manipur was jolted when the lifeless, decomposed body of Baby Lungnila Elizabeth was found inside a gunny bag at Tera Sadokpam. Significantly the body was found more than a week after she was kidnapped from the gate of her school.

Two years later, two children from Senapati district, Hrinii Hubert and Muheni Martin disappeared with their skeletal remains being discovered on a hill near Senapati district headquarters some time later.

Till date not a single suspect has been picked up, let alone taking the case to its logical conclusion.

Yawning gaps in the investigations or the culprits proving to be just too smart for the whole police force ?

Not a comforting thought by any stretch of the imagination. Let these past instances serve as a reminder to the State police. Ningombam Satyabhama is dead, most probably murdered.

Her lifeless body was discovered in the afternoon of April 5 and fast forward by three days and there is nothing so far to indicate that the cops are anywhere near cracking the case.

It is early yet, but it would do the police a whole lot of good if the nagging doubt is proved wrong.