The gruesome murder of a student that shocked Tamil Nadu in 1996

A chilling murder case involving a medical student, John David, who was eventually sentenced to life imprisonment.

In the 1995-96 academic year, Navarasu, 19, son of P.K. Ponnusamy, retired Vice-Chancellor of Madras University, was studying first year MBBS at Annamalai University’s Raja Muthiah Medical College at Annamalai Nagar, Chidambaram. At his home in Chennai, his father, having returned from a foreign trip, was waiting for his son to arrive to celebrate Deepavali which fell on November 10, 1996. When Navarasu did not return until November 9, Professor Ponnusamy enquired with friends in Chennai. As his whereabouts were not known, he rang up the university. He was informed that his hostel room was locked. When it was broken upon, his belongings, along with a small box, were found strewn on the floor.

His father rushed to the university and lodged a complaint with the Annamalai Nagar police on November 10, 1996. It was registered as Crime No. 509 of 1996. Three days before the case was registered, a torso kept in a carton box was recovered on the morning of November 7 by the Pattinapakkam police from the PTC Bus Depot at Mandaveli, Chennai. They were informed by the conductor of a bus plying on route number 21G (Tambaram-Broadway).

The Annamalai Nagar police received information from students about John David, a senior, who was absconding from the college since November 12. Two days later, he surrendered before the judicial magistrate at Mannargudi. At 1.30 a.m. on November 19, John David gave a confessional statement that he had thrown the severed head of Navarasu in the boat-canal on the university campus. Then, the head was recovered. The Annamalai Nagar police received the records connected to the torso recovered in Chennai, suspecting that it could belong to Navarasu.

On November 22, a message was received from the Villupuram Control Room that three human bones were recovered from the shores of Koonimedu, a village that is part of the Marakkanam block of Villuppuram district. After a post-mortem, experts of the Forensic Sciences Department held that the head, torso and bones belonged to one individual and concluded that they, in fact, belonged to Navarasu. A DNA report also confirmed their findings.

The prosecution case was that the deceased and the accused were staying at different hostels. At 2 p.m. on November 6, 1996, John David took Navarasu away and subjected him to severe ragging in a hostel room. When Navarasu resisted, John David caused a head injury to him. When he was lying on the ground unconscious, the accused severed his head and limbs with knives and removed his gold ring, watch and gold chain. Then, he put the head and the gold ring and chain in a zip bag and threw it into the canal near the hostel. He burnt the blood-stained clothes of the deceased in the open terrace of the hostel. John David took the torso in a suitcase, along with the limbs, on a train to Madras and threw the limbs in a river when the train crossed Cuddalore. He put the torso in a bus at Tambaram and absconded.

In this case, establishing the identity of the victim was challenging since the decapitated head that was recovered from the waterbody was decomposed. The trial court relied upon the superimposition process/test done by Jayaprakash, Assistant Director, Forensic Sciences Department, Madras. Dr. Jayaprakash said in his evidence that the skull was that of Navarasu.

Skull-photo superimposition is a process of overlaying the skull and face images in suitable enlargements for examining the match for acceptability. Dr. Jayaprakash had said that this process was first utilised in the famous Ruston case in England in 1935.