In December 2024, Kerala Police's Technical Intelligence wing embarked on an unusual mission: using artificial intelligence to age photographs from 2006. Investigators fed old, grainy images into AI systems, trying different combinations of hairstyles, facial features, and aging patterns.
They were searching for two men who had vanished after a horrific triple murder, leaving behind only faded photographs and a grieving mother's quest for justice.
"We tried several iterations," Manoj Abraham, Additional Director General of Police in Kerala told Decode, describing their methodical approach.
The breakthrough came unexpectedly – a wedding photograph on Facebook matched one of their AI-generated images.
This digital breadcrumb would finally lead to the closure of the case in Kollam where a young mother and her newborn twins were killed. The killers were finally found in the case that had haunted Kerala's police force for nearly two decades.
The AI match led investigators to Puducherry, where both suspects had built new lives under false identities. Rajesh P, who had posed as "Anil Kumar" during the crime, was now "Praveen," running an interior design business. Divil Kumar had become "Vishnu."
Their careful construction of new identities had helped them evade capture for 19 years.
The Tragedy, 19 Years Ago
In February 2006, 23-year-old Ranjini and her 17-day-old twin daughters were brutally murdered in their rented house in Aeram, Anchal, about 40 kilometers from Kollam in Kerala. The first to witness the horrific scene was Santhamma, Ranjini’s mother, when she returned from the panchayat office, carrying grapes and eggs she'd bought for her daughter.
The original investigation hit its first break when police recovered a motorcycle registration certificate from the crime scene. This led them to a used-motorcycle shop in Thiruvananthapuram, where employees identified Divil Kumar and mentioned his companion had used an ATM. Bank records from Pathankot revealed this second man as Rajesh, Divil's Army colleague.
The motive emerged from a complex history.
Santhamma had already faced immense struggles before the tragedy. As a single mother, abandoned by her husband when her daughters were young, she worked in a cashew factory to support her family. When she underwent a hysterectomy, her daughter Ranjini was a constant support. “Ente kunju (my kid) was all I had to take care of me,” Santhamma recalled.
Santhamma revealed that Divil Kumar, an army personnel stationed in Pathankot, Punjab, had stalked her daughter when they were neighbors in Alayamon. One day, as Ranjini was returning after visiting her mother in the hospital, she found Divil Kumar inside the house. “He covered her face and mouth with something, and she became unconscious. The next day she woke up with bleeding,” Santhamma said.
The alleged assault led to Ranjni’s pregnancy with the twins.
Ranjini gave birth to twin daughters at SAT Hospital in January 2006. On the day of her discharge, a stranger suddenly appeared and forcefully entered the vehicle with Santhamma and Ranjini, claiming that his close relative was also admitted to the hospital for delivery. This man, Rajesh—who was a former army personnel—provided a fake name, Anil Kumar.
Fearing the judgment and gossip from the residents of Anchal about her daughter's situation, Santhamma took Ranjini and the newborns to a rented house in Vattiyoorkavu. However, when Ranjini learned about the rumors spreading in Anchal, she insisted that they return. A determined and capable woman, Ranjini worked not only as a tailor but also as a clerk at a lawyer’s office, was actively involved in the Kudumbashree (State Kudumbashree Mission for Women Empowerment), and had learned typewriting.
For Santhamma, who had carried the weight of this tragedy for 19 years, the arrests finally brought the closure she had sought for so long.
When Santhamma, Ranjini, and the babies returned to Anchal, they initially stayed with a relative. But the stigma of an unmarried daughter’s pregnancy weighed heavily on her, with both neighbors and relatives subjecting her to humiliation.
Ranjini wanted to put an end to the label of 'fatherless' children.
“She wanted to write to Divil Kumar—not to pressure him but to have him acknowledge the truth and move forward. However, his brother-in-law, Sreekumar, suggested that we file a complaint with the police or the State Women’s Commission,” Santhamma recounted.
When they approached the Commission, a staff member advised them to frame the complaint as if Ranjini’s pregnancy resulted from a romantic relationship, assuming that this approach would make Divil Kumar more willing to accept her and the children without resistance. His parents and brother-in-law were present at the Commission hearing in Kollam when the complaint was filed.
“That is how the media picked up the story of a so-called romantic relationship,” Santhamma explained. “They had sexual contact only once, and she had disclosed this to the gynecologist in front of me.”
Once in a while, the stranger they had met at the hospital, Anil, would drop into their house - pretending to offer help. One such day, he suggested writing a letter to the commanding officer of Divil Kumar to make him accountable.
On the day of the murder, Rajesh, who called himself Anil, came to their house. This was shortly after the Kerala State Women's Commission ordered a DNA test to establish the twins' paternity.
Reigniting The Case
The case might have remained buried in dusty files if not for a conversation between two police officers. SP Shanavas A, who had originally investigated the case as Circle Inspector in Anchal, shared the story with colleagues at the Intelligence Wing.
For Shanavas, the case had never truly closed—it was a lingering memory of justice delayed. Despite their best efforts years ago, the suspects had remained elusive. Eventually, Shanavas was transferred, and the case lost momentum.
However, after that conversation with Shanavas, an officer at the Technical Intelligence Wing took particular interest. "I got curious and thought of giving it a try," the officer told Decode. "If they were alive, they would have left a digital track somewhere, but nothing was there in the case files."
Equipped with his expertise in modern technology, the junior officer made it his mission to track down the accused.
The team’s first step was analysing an old photograph of their primary suspect, Divil Kumar. But matching a 19-year-old image—captured when technology was still in its infancy—required more than just artificial intelligence. "AI can make mistakes. We don't blindly rely on it. We have techniques to negate errors, which sometimes require going off track," the officer explained, emphasising that multiple factors were verified before making any moves.
“AI technology has great potential in policing. It’s a generic tool, and the police use AI-based software to solve cases,” the officer added. However, he clarified that the department has no in-house AI system specifically designed for criminal investigations. Instead, they rely on external tools powered by AI and similar technologies. Acknowledging the risks of misidentification, he stressed, “There’s always a chance of nabbing the wrong person based on AI alone, so we only act after verifying multiple factors, leaving no room for error.”
After the murders, both suspects—who had been serving in the 45 Air Defence Regiment in Pathankot—vanished. The Army eventually declared them deserters. Investigators tracked ATM transactions to Nasik and Nagpur, but the suspects remained out of reach. In 2010, the case was transferred to the CBI at Santhamma’s request through the Kerala High Court.
Throughout these years, Santhamma never lost hope. She moved to Kollam, earning a living by reciting the ‘Srimad Bhagavatam’ at temples. "I lived all these years because of the strength given by an unknown force," she said. "God saved me," she added.
When the Technical Intelligence Wing matched AI-generated images to social media photos, they alerted the CBI’s Chennai unit. The arrests in January 2025 brought closure to a case that had spanned nearly two decades. SP Shanavas personally called Santhamma to share the news.
“The main accused, Divil, had planned the murder even before the children were born. Rajesh pretended to be Anil Kumar and tried to get close to Santhamma by offering them help,” Shanavas told Decode.
For Santhamma, who had carried the weight of this tragedy for 19 years, the arrests finally brought the closure she had sought for so long—a resolution made possible with the determination of the Kerala police and artificial intelligence.
As she recalled the day she lost her daughter, she remembered the last meal she had fed her: cooked green gram and a glass of milk. “Ranjini wanted to eat tapioca with fish curry, and I had cooked it for her. But I couldn’t give that to my daughter,” she said, breaking down in tears.
