Blood on floor: Cops catch house owners ‘red-handed’

Police believe that the blood found on the floor of a house in Maninagar area of Ahmedabad had been deliberately put there by someone and th...

Police believe that the blood found on the floor of a house in Maninagar area of Ahmedabad had been deliberately put there by someone and they have closed the case. Maninagar Senior Police Inspector B.I. Patel said, ‘‘This was deliberately done by the family. They have just made false claims and hence there is no criminal case against the family. We have closed the investigation.’’

The Bhartiya Jan Vigyan Jatha (BJVJ), a voluntary organisation involved in creating awareness against superstition, also said that there was no natural phenomenon behind the incident and that someone from the family put the blood on the floor.

According to BJVJ chairman Jayant Pandya, their team had found that the owner of the house, Hiralal Jehtalal Shah (73), and his daughter-in-law Falguni had got the blood from a blood bank and sprayed it on the floor. He also alleged that the family practised black magic.

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Pandya said the organisation was waiting for the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) report. ‘‘Once we get the report from FSL, we will compare it with the one given to us by the local blood bank. If both reports match, we will lodge a police complaint against the family.’’

He also said the organisation had identified a person who had accompanied Falguni to the blood bank to get the blood. ‘‘The blood was procured from a blood bank a couple of days before the incident under a fictious name,’’ Pandya said. He refused to disclose the name of the blood bank.

He said the family had confessed it was not a natural phenomenon but was created by them at the insistence of tantrik Swarup Swami of Kalupur for ‘‘ridding the family of misfortune and to attain wealth.’’

‘‘When we contacted Swarup Swami, he said he had never advised the Shah family to resort to such means to attain wealth,’’ he said. Swami, who runs his business from Kalupur area, has been untraceable since.

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Pandya claimed that it were repeated questions which made the family confess their involvement. ‘‘Following such a wide publicity and fearing police action, they consulted a lawyer who advised them not to sign any document. This prevented us from taking their signature on an affidavit stating that the family was involved in the incident,’’ he said.

However, Hiralal Shah, refuted Pandya’s claims. He said, ‘‘Why should we do such a thing? If we were into black magic we would not have informed the police. If my daughter-in-law had collected the blood from the blood bank, get her identified by the person who gave her the blood. Does the blood bank give blood without a letter from the doctor?’’