2023-12-14 13:23:00
This police officer, retired Inspector Dooms, from the former PJ of Brussels, unpacks the famous Case of Room 415, a crime that remained unpunished even though the culprit was held. For Jean Dooms, the evidence was overwhelming. Belgium was to request the extradition of the suspect. He, tried years later in his country of origin where his family had connections, was able to create sufficient doubt to obtain acquittal.
An undeserved acquittal, says the former Brussels police officer, the only one to have followed the affair from start to finish.
In his memoirs which appear at Éditions Le Livre en Papier, Jean Dooms, 78 years old, wanted to pay a final tribute to the woman who was both the victim of femicide and an honor killing, terms rarely used in the time.
The assassin, because for Jean Dooms there is no doubt, was able to resume the thread of his existence in India as if nothing had happened here, whereas being judged in Brussels, his conviction would not have made a difference. fold.
Horror Central Station
The case began on May 29, 1979, a Tuesday, with the discovery of human remains very close to the Central Station.
It’s 7 a.m. A ragpicker searching through trash cans is seized with fear when he opens a garbage container placed at the corner of rue de Loxum and rue des Paroissiens. Marcel Verbelen, that’s his name, found there 1 head, 2 legs and 2 arms with hands whose fingers had been cut off. The face is disfigured. Nose and ears are missing. The hair was shaved, the cheeks lacerated. For Jean Dooms, a young inspector who joined the criminal section of Divisional Officer Hubert De Vocht three months earlier, it was the beginning of a case which would have its epilogue twenty-three years later, 6,500 km away.
Precious press
Jean Dooms has not forgotten the smell of flesh “even more unbearable,” he writes, “than the sight of corpse pieces”. Even the sex might not be determined. No worrying disappearances had been reported. The trunk remained nowhere to be found. With so few elements, the case looked difficult.
Except that one detail came to the aid of the investigators: a dental anomaly. The dentition, instead of two upper incisors, only had one central incisor. Only one tooth, but wider, instead of the usual two.
The container affair was going to make headlines in Belgium and abroad. Thus in the DH, Raoul Dewael headlined: “The body of a woman (between 20 and 40 years old) dismembered in a container”.
In the DH, Raoul Dewael headlined: “The body of a woman (between 20 and 40 years old) dismembered in a container”. ©DH
Twist
The solution came from abroad.
On June 12, the Daily Mail reported the mysterious disappearance for 15 days of a 23-year-old woman of Hindu origin. Namita Lochab got married on May 26 in London to a 29-year-old orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Mandera Dahiya.
The couple then took the ferry to make their honeymoon in Belgium where Namita had vanished. At the insistence of Namita’s parents, the husband returned to London alone and reported the disappearance which he believed occurred in a hotel near the Grand Place, the Arenberg hotel on rue d’Assaut in Brussels where the couple had reserved the room. 415. Namita had left the room and without explanation, had not returned. The hotel – today the NH Brussels Grand-Place Arenberg Hotel – is located 265 m from the container on rue de Loxum.
Forced marriage
It was an arranged marriage. An accountant at the BBC, Namita was actually very much in love with a colleague. But the family, to respect tradition, had pushed for this agreement with this surgeon from a higher caste in India. And Namita, to keep up appearances, had given in on the condition of never having to maintain intimate relations with Mandera Dahiya. When the article appeared in London, the link was made in Brussels with the container affair. The investigation moved to the Arenberg hotel and room 415 where Jean Dooms would find the decisive element, by dismantling the cover of a switch: a drop of dried blood. A droplet, but it was enough. In the meantime, Dahiya had taken off, hastily left London and reached New Delhi, via Frankfurt.
Bizarre decisions
The hunt lasted four years. In 1983, the stubborn Superintendent Chhattwall, chief investigator at the Indian Central Bureau of Investigations, set his sights on the Dahiya which had changed its name.
The acts having been committed in Brussels, Belgium requested extradition. And that’s where things went wrong: the following year, in 1984, the Brussels public prosecutor’s office and the Minister of Justice – Jean Gol -, for questionable reasons, purely and simply renounced extradition.
It was an unexpected gift for Dahiya who was immediately released. The procedure continued in India but it lasted beyond all reason.
In 1999, the surgeon was sentenced to life imprisonment. But in 2002, the New Delhi High Court overturned the conviction. For her, there were “shortcomings in the Belgian case giving rise to serious presumptions of innocence in favor of the accused”. She considered that there was “no direct evidence” of Mandera Dahiya’s guilt. It was not even established that the remains found in the container were those of Namita Lochab.
Inspector Jean Dooms, from the former Brussels PJ. ©Gilbert Dupont
Why why ?
Bullshit, retorts in his memoirs the investigator Jean Dooms who has never digested this denial of justice. Why did Belgium, which requested the extradition of the Heysel hooligans the following year, give up trying the surgeon in Brussels when everything was ready? Dooms recalls that in 2002, a DNA analysis might formally, completely and definitively establish that the remains on the street of Loxum were those of Namita, without possible discussion. DNA might confirm that the blood found in the switch was that of the young woman. Only the couple had occupied the room. The cuts, so clean, might only be the work of a professional, like a surgeon. The escape behavior was one more element. Dahiya had fled to England then, when the Daily Mail article appeared, to India, to Sonipat north of New Delhi where he hid and lived under a false name for five years, up to and including in its own community.
The Old Rat
What more was needed, asks Jean Dooms, who was affectionately called the Old Rat, in this book of astonishing and moving anecdotes over a 34-year career. The Brussels PJ was located at 13 rue des Quatre Bras.
The first volume – 430 pages – appears under the title: “An old rat from ’13’ tells”. Throughout the pages, Jean Dooms proves that being a cop does not prevent you from having a heart, nor from possessing the talent of writing.
Throughout the pages, Jean Dooms proves that being a cop does not prevent you from having a heart, nor from possessing the talent of writing. ©DH
The fingers of Namita Lochab, the bride of Room 415 whose murder went unpunished, have never been found. On the other hand, the trunk was removed two months later by a boatman in the Brussels canal. It was the time when the media did not use the word but of course yes, it was an honor killing and femicide before its time.
“Un Vieux Rat du 13 recounts” is published by Le Livre en papier. To order on the publisher’s website or by telephone: 064/671774
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