Almost three decades after she hit the headlines for allegedly committing a spine-chilling murder, Omana Edadan is still on the run. The doctor, a native of Kannur district in Kerala, is wanted by the Crime Branch CID of the Tamil Nadu police for the murder of her lover K.M. Muralidharan in a retiring room at the Udhagamandalam railway station on July 11, 1996.
Omana, now 70, has a Red Corner Notice issued by the Interpol pending against her. For over two decades there has been no trace of her movement or possible location. Known for changing her name or identity, the accused has left no digital footprints making it even more difficult for investigators to track her activities.
The ophthalmologist jumped conditional bail and vanished from the police radar in 2001. Three years later, a Judicial Magistrate court in Udhagamandalam (Ooty) declared her as a proclaimed offender. Naming her in its list of Wanted Persons, Interpol accused Omana of “Abduction in order to murder, murder and causing disappearance of evidence.”
Stench exposed murder
But for an alert cab driver, the sensational case would not have got exposed the accused who was caught being in possession of the body parts of her lover. On July 12, 1996, the lady doctor had hired a taxi at Kodaikanal and stuffed her luggage in the boot. After sometime, the taxi driver sensed a stench of rotten flesh and initially thought it would have been from the body of some stray animal run over by passing vehicles. However, he grew suspicious after the stench did not go away.
Since he insisted on checking her baggage, Omana was left with no other option but to reveal the contents of her suitcases. To his utter shock, the taxi driver saw parts of the human body packed in polythene bags. He wasted no time in alerting the Kodaikanal police who arrested the doctor. The case was initially transferred to the Udhagamandalam police and then to the CB-CID for further investigation.
Affair cost her dearly
Omana told investigators that she was a native of Payyanur near Kannur and lived there with her husband, also a doctor, and two children. It was in 1991 that she met Muralidharan, an engineer, and got into an illicit affair with him. The relationship soon led to gossip among family and friends ending her family life and forcing her to leave for Malaysia. In Kuala Lumpur Omana gave herself a Muslim identity and worked in a hospital for two years.
Trouble started when she invited Muralidharan to join her. He also went there and changed his name and personal details. After a while their bond turned sour and Muralidharan returned to Kerala. But he continued to demand money and even threatened to expose her fake identity to Malaysian authorities if she let him down. It was at this point, investigators say, that she decided to eliminate him.
Macabre operation
Omana flew to Thiruvananthapuram where she purchased pentothal sodium, syringe and needle. From there she booked a ticket to Coimbatore with a fake name and address. On reaching Udhagamandalam, the doctor stayed in a retiring room after she could not find a remote lonely cottage. She bought some suitcases/baggage, left it in the room and went to Kozhikode. She called Muralidharan from a roadside telephone booth and invited him to Udhagamandalam and insisted that he come without informing anybody and stay with her for a few days.
A CB-CID report published in a journal said that on receiving the message from her, Muralidharan informed his family that he was going to Coimbatore on a business trip. The duo met in Kozhikode on July 10, 1996, and reached Udhagamandalam the next day. It was on the intervening night that Omana executed her deadly plan. On the pretext of giving a mood enhancer, she injected a dose of pentothal sodium, which the police said is an ultra-active anesthesia capable of causing death if given in higher dosage. A few minutes later, Muralidharan breathed his last.
Omana used her surgical skills to dismember the body into small pieces. While disposing of some small pieces that she sliced by flushing them in the toilet, she packed the bigger parts in polythene covers and stuffed them in the suitcases. The next morning, Omana checked out of the retiring room with the baggage and hired a taxi to Kodaikanal. When attempts to dispose of the suitcases in a ravine failed, she got into the taxi again, but it was too late to hold the stench from emanating from the decomposing body parts.
Whereabouts remain a mystery
Responding to a query on the status of the case, a senior officer in the CB-CID said constant efforts were on to nab the accused whose whereabouts remain a mystery despite a Red Corner Notice and sharing of profile law-enforcing agencies in India, and abroad.
After the Interpol stepped in, there was information from Malaysia of a woman’s dead body that had some similarities with the physical description of Omana. But further investigation turned out to be otherwise.
The CB-CID report said that on March 20, 2009, from the Interpol Secretariat General, France, provided inputs of a possible match of the subject (accused) in the United States. However, the police in Washington later confirmed that the person identified was not Omana. “Efforts to trace and bring her to India to stand trial in this gruesome murder case continue,” the CB-CID said.
The case is still under investigation and police are tracking all possible clues to arrest the septuagenarian from her hideout, wherever. For now, Dr Omana Edadan remains a fugitive.
