Unconventional Investigative Methods?

Vina - Sebelum 7 Hari. (Indonesian, 2024)
Director: Anggy Umbara

Thanks to Saravanan Decodes, my latest indulgence, for highlighting many solved and unsolved mysteries worldwide. He has 700-over YouTube presentations of some of the most puzzling and heinous murders and tries to decode them.

Two exciting cases piqued my interest. It was in how these seemingly dead-ended cases saw living daylight through unconventional methods.

The first case happened in Cirebon, West Java. A 16-year-old Vina Dewi Arsita, a student, was reported to have died after getting involved in a road traffic accident while travelling with her boyfriend, Edy, in the thick of the night in 2016. The death certificate was released as death due to Motor Vehicle Accident. There were some uncertainties about whether police did not come forward with more information about the ongoing investigations or whether their investigation was shoddy. Her boyfriend, too, perished in the accident. Burial was done.

On the seventh day of her death, Vina's best friend, Linda, was possessed by Vina's spirit, who narrated minute to minute account of what Vina endured before her death. In the local populace, it is believed that a dead person's spirit hovers around their neighbourhood before departing for good. Vina's admirer, Eky, who had made bold advances towards her, was once spat upon and humiliated by Vina. Eky was a member of a motorcycle chain gang. Keeping a grudge against her actions, Eky, with his ten other friends, confronted Edy and Vina, ramped them down, ran their machines over Vina's limbs, gang-raped her and left her to die.

This news soon became viral, and sympathetic netizens launched an awareness campaign. The police had no choice but to re-investigate. New investigative papers were opened. Rape was confirmed, and eight of the eleven perpetrators were apprehended, charged and convicted. They confessed to their crimes. Astonishingly, their account of what happened corresponded precisely to what was told by Vina's spirit. Eky and two others are still at large. A point to note is that Eky's father is a police officer.

Saravanan Decodes

People wonder whether its investigation was manipulated or whether justice can still be served after so many years.

The second bizarre case happened in a village near Agra, India, in 1988. A 4-year-old Toran Singh (@Titu) was born into a poor family of six children. Titu was a precocious child who started speaking at the age of 18 months. By 4, he started talking about his wealthy family, which he was born into, and the roaring electrical business he ran in Agra. And he said his name was Suresh Verma.

Out of curiosity, his elder brother checked out his assertions. It was all true. Titu even recognised his widowed wife of his last birth. Suresh Verma indeed had a radio business and was killed by foes. He was shot in his head. Due to a lack of evidence, the case stalled. Police were called in. 

Titu ( Toran Singh)

Curiously, Titu could narrate all the intimate details of the murder that only the victim could tell and that the police did not reveal for public consumption. Titu identified his shooter, who confessed to the police later. The killer was later charged and sentenced. Titu had a birthmark on his scalp, which corresponded to the area where Suresh Verma was shot.

Toran Singh went on to lead a quiet life away from media scrutiny. He is reportedly an assistant professor of naturopathy and yoga therapy at Benares Hindu University in Varanasi.

Even though the methods employed to investigate these cases will not stand alone if challenged in a court of law, they can nevertheless be helpful as part of the police armamentarium to cow the perpetrator into submission.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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3 for the party of 2?

Past Lives (Korean/English; 2023)

Director: Celine Song

One thing that created the rift between two men who dared to venture into the crypt of our mind and try to explain why we act and react the way we do remains unresolved. 

Sigmund Freud posited, in simpler terms, that our learnt experiences, together with unresolved pervasive sexual desires, are the main reasons for actions, inaction and maladies. His mentee, Karl Jung, thought some external events and forces might manifest as meaningful coincidences.

The question is whether we have only one life, just here and now and then we die, or we come here again and again. The film is selling the Korean Buddhist idea of 'In Yun'. We are all somehow connected cosmologically through reincarnation. When we meet people and feel we know them, we may do. There may be some unsettled business that needed to be settled, left from our previous encounters, god knows when. This could be our umpteenth trans-birth meet. Or it could be a ruse to get into each other's pants. 

The Mahabharata is full of these stories of paying back the evil deeds of past lives. King Shantanu's first wife, the mighty Ganga, drowned seven of her newborns. The eight escaped. Her justification was that her eight children were the eight elements that acquired a curse from a sage for coveting a cow in their previous lives. Like that, every action and reaction in this epic has its roots in the past.

As it turns out, in the film, a thirty-something Korean girl whose family had migrated to North America has a chance to meet her childhood friend. The last time they met, they were twelve-year-old classmates who shared something of a puppy love. After migrating to Canada, the girl, No Young, changed her name to Nora and started life anew in her newfound home. The boy, Hae Sung, stayed and progressed in his own way. Out of sight, but not really out of mind. The lost touch.

3 for the party of 2?

With the help of social media, they reconnected twelve years later. Life took its course; Nora got married, Hae Sung went to study in China, got into a relationship and failed. Another twelve years later, Hae Sung announced his arrival in the USA. This created an awkward situation between the three in the party of two. Nora's white husband worries she might return to her first love. Nora fears rekindling the old relationship, and Hae Sung is probably a forlorn romantic. 

The story is about how they resolve an issue that is a non-issue. After being tied down in a relationship, it is human nature to wonder how life would be if we had taken a different path. That is when we should slap ourselves awake, douse water on our faces and remind ourselves that whichever path we take, the journey and the outcome are invariably the same. The paths may vary, but both would be filled with ups, downs, joy, heartbreaks, achievements and letdowns. Just eat what we have, enjoy the flavour served and stop wondering what another flavour would have tasted. The end result, we know.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.