Source: Hindustan Times
NEW DELHI, INDIA, August 18,2002: The police crime branch has commissioned new weapons for its crime-busters: prayers and vaastu shastra (sacred architecture). As cases pile up and leads are hard to come by, police are going in for shuddhi pujas (purification rites) at various crime branch offices. During the last fortnight, puja was carried out in at least two crime branch offices, Adarsh Nagar and R. K. Puram, to drive out evil influences affecting their work. Apparently it worked. The havan (fire ceremony) at the Adarsh Nagar office was held on July 28 and the first arrest in the complicated Shivani Bhatnagar murder case was made on July 29. “The case was cracked after the Gods accepted our prayers,” said an officer. The havan at Crime Branch’s R. K. Puram office was held on August 11. Two days later his team hunted down Pitamber, wanted in 25 cases. Tewari, incidentally, changed the vastu of his office a few days ago. Invoking the Gods for professional reasons, though, is no new trend among Delhi’s policemen. A senior officer is convinced he was able to solve 29 bomb blast cases while posted with the ISC unit only because of a havan he conducted in his office. And another said he had had 35 havans in the anti-extortion cell during his tenure there, saying, “We solved the diamond merchant kidnapping case, the Bengali Market kidnapping and the Tarun Puri case.”