Ahmedabad: Ghosts have been reputable informants in famous murder cases. In the most storied of them all, the elder Hamlet’s ghost reveals his killer’s identity to his son. A case in Sarkhej produced a Shakespearean plot with a twist. The prime accused in a murder case repeatedly told police that the victim’s ghost was haunting him.To probe or not to probe was never really a question for police. The investigation persuaded police to excavate a house where they recovered the victim’s body.Ahmedabad crime branch has determined that at least some ghost stories may be confessions by a person haunted by guilt, or reports of otherworldly occurrences tied to real-life crimes.Police have received 25 reports of “ghostly events” from across the city over the past two months and have opened inquiries into each. Investigators have already linked three of these leads to suspected murders in which no homicide case had been registered.Senior crime branch officers said the department started collecting such information after solving two cold murder cases: one from 34 years ago in Vatva and the other from 10 years ago in Sarkhej.A senior officer confirmed that all inputs originated from Ahmedabad. The officer said investigators had already identified suspects in some cases.“We rigorously investigated “ghost” inputs and found that three of them were related to murders that didn’t come under our scrutiny,” a senior crime branch officer said.Police have now started gathering documentary and forensic evidence, and witness statements, to establish the sequence of events and identify suspects.Crime branch officers stressed that they do not investigate paranormal claims. Instead, they treat ghost stories as possible indicators of guilt or local rumours that may conceal criminal activity.Officers said they had instructed personnel to activate informer networks and discreetly verify reports of abandoned houses, occult rituals, repeated claims of hauntings and suspicious behaviour by people associated with such locations.Police said the strategy had evolved after two successful cases.In the Vatva case, information about rituals performed to calm the spirit of a woman allegedly haunting an abandoned house prompted investigators to reopen the 1992 case.The excavation of a sealed septic tank yielded human teeth and skeletal remains, leading to the arrest of Shamsuddin Khedawala, the husband of the victim, Farzana Radhanpuri.“We investigate evidence, not ghosts,” another crime branch officer said.Officers said every input now undergoes scientific verification through forensic examination, witness statements and technical evidence before investigators treat it as a criminal case.They added that no lead, however unusual, would be dismissed without verification if it carried the potential to uncover an undiscovered crime.
