Bottles of blood, brain, kidney and human remains

How many Hollywood and Bollywood potboilers have we seen, showing bodies being thrown up when excavations were on and how bottles of blood and human remains sprung up from nowhere and sent actors into of spasms of  terror and incoherence, bringing the audience to the edge of their seats.

There have been one movie after another that could be labeled more scarier than the other. How many times have we felt a slight tingling of the nerves and hoped that the events that have become parts of reel history become real.  

Well, the spooky part did happen in real a life and how. This was in Bangalore and let me tell you it gave the cops the fright of their life and sent shivers down the spines of those who came in contact with it.

If you are a Hindi film buff, let me tell you it could beat the best of any film Ramsey have thrown at us or it could easily outsmart Mahal or Woh Kaun Thi.

The setting was the headquarters of the Bangalore district police called Om Mahal.  This building once belonged to the royal family of Nepal and it is now the headquarters of the district police. It is located at the junction of Millers Road and Cunningham Road and just diagonally opposite to Chandrika Hotel.

The Om Mahal houses the office of the Superintendent of Police, Bangalor rural district and other offices.

The Bangalore District police wanted a construct a guest house and they began digging the earth in the sprawling premises. When the digging started, the workmen were startled out of their wits when they came across hundreds of bottles.

Surprised and a little apprehensive, the workmen opened one bottle and out came the remains of a human being. By then, the workmen had dun up bottles of all sizes, shapes and colour.

The bottles yielded skulls, lungs, hearts, livers, kidneys and even  brains.With enough blood spilling out of the bottles, the workmen’s tryst with the unreal, surreal and ghosts and ghouls was complete.

Generally cops are tough and though they are superstitious, they are rarely fazed by bodies. Yet, the human remains in bottles, neatly cut and packed and blood in the bottles sent them shivering. Several cops looked terrified and the spooky stories soon began to make rounds.

What sealed the cops fear about spooky stories, was another tale of a secret chamber below a staircase in Om Mahal which had not been opened for years. Policemen had given a it a miss as they had been told that misfortune would befall the one who tried to unlock the room. The key had been conveniently lost and even the skeleton key had remained unused.

However, saner sense prevailed and the cops sent the remain for chemical examination and took up investigation of the case. They later realised that the bottles of blood and human remains had been dumped in a yard when the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) which had been housed in Om Mahal moved to their sprawling establishment in Madivala.

The blood and human remains were the “property” of the Forensic Science Laboratory which has stayed put at the property from 1960's to 1993.

When they shifted to Madivala, they left all these bottles behind because the erstwhile Bangalore City Corporation (BCC) refused to transport human body parts.

As the officials did not know how to dispose them, they dumped them in the earth. In those days, there were no incinerators and they had to be imported from abroad which was very costly.

What about Om Mahal. The tale here takes a twist. Police records show that Om Mahal has been claimed by six persons hailing from the Nepal royal family. Devyani Rana, whose controversial marriage to the then crown prince of Nepal resulted in a bloody carnage and death of the entire family of Nepal King Birendra, is one of the descendants of one of the claimants to the Mahal.

The property, once a palace spread over 4.23 acres, was acquired by the Defence after the Chinese aggression in 1962. Thereafter, it has continuously housed the district police office which was moved into this building from the office of the Commissionerate of Police on Infantry Road.