A head in a jar for 74 years: As another beheading case shocks Chennai, experts recall Alavandar murder

CHENNAI: In a corner of the forensic museum at Madras Medical College, inside an old wooden, glass‑fronted cupboard, a jar holds the sawn‑off half of a human head, with a small label: M11. There are no records or documents describing the specimen, but professors say it belonged to C Alavandar, a pen salesman who was murdered in 1952.

Most of what today’s forensic teachers know is drawn from a brief chapter on the case in Textbook of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology and from newspaper archives. On Aug 29, 1952, a foul smell from a green steel trunk on the Indo‑Ceylon Express (also called the Boat Mail) led railway police to a male torso at Manamadurai.

A few days later, a severed head was found buried in Royapuram beach. The head and torso were taken to Madras Medical College, one of the city’s main teaching hospitals, for postmortem.

This was the era before genetic profiling. Assistant professor of forensic medicine Dr CB Gopalakrishnan worked with what he had.

“He matched the neck vertebrae of the head and torso, bone against bone. When he was satisfied it was the same person, he looked at the other basics, i.e., age and build, and small personal details such as ear‑piercing,” said Dr C Manohar, a retired professor of forensic medicine.

Alavandar had a distinctive pattern of ear‑piercing, two holes on the right lobe and one on the left, and a mark on his leg, recalls Dr Manivasagam Muthusamy, associate professor of forensic medicine at Govt Kumaramangalam Medical College Hospital in Salem. That, and the wife’s identification of the face, helped them fix who he was.

Finally, they took fingerprints and compared them with his British‑era service records; he had worked in the Army during World War II before joining Gem & Co in Parrys as a salesman, he said.

There was no DNA or fancy scientific test, but at that time, there was really no room for doubt about who that head and torso belonged to, Dr Manohar said.

Police then used corroborative evidence, including the missing‑person report filed by Alavandar’s wife and witness accounts of his last visit to a small house on Cemetery Road, to build their case. Two people were convicted of his murder: his former lover, Devaki Menon, and her husband, Prabhakara Menon.

According to the prosecution and later accounts, Alavandar, who also ran a small sari business, cultivated relationships with several women and continued to press Devaki for sexual favours after her marriage.

On Aug 28, 1952, she invited him home where he was killed. Justice AS Panchapakesa Aiyar sentenced Menon to seven years’ rigorous imprisonment and Devaki to three years in prison.

Years later, the head suspended in formalin is displayed in the forensic museum to show students how careful anatomy and documentation can solve a seemingly impossible case.

At some point later, no one now can say when, the original head was cut again. One half stayed in Chennai. The other half, professors say, was shipped to another medical college in Madurai.