The grave diggers are back in business. Whenever the election fever rises, political operatives unearth occasional hidden treasures but mostly buried cadavers for obvious reasons. Skeletons in the closet need not hide too long. Someone is bound to excavate them. The termites indeed are coming out of the woodwork. In last week's Post banner story, a police investigator came out with a notarized affidavit that there are other perpetrators involved in the heinous rape-slay of a high school student of the Biking high School just before the 2004 elections.

This controversial rape-slay case should have been a family affair were it not for the fact that it involves not only the loss of honor but also of the very life of one who deserves a better life but has since been deprived of it. For sure, Mayor Doloreich Dumaluan and his brother Teofilo Jr. would have wanted the issue to be kept within the family but it seems public interest is compelling enough to revive interest in it. The girl, whom both admitted was a relative, was on her way to her prime, a student at the Biking High School who was working her way as a nanny of the mayor's brother, disappeared one day. She was found naked and lifeless.

The policeman's sudden interest in the case may be liable to suspicion. After all, the election is just around the corner. Moreover, he was one of the policemen whom the then vice-mayor complained against in the conduct of the investigation. Both the mayor and his brother executed affidavits in favor of the lone accused in the case, a detention inmate named Narciso Maghamil, hinting that another man, a neighbor could have been the perpetrator. Curiously enough though, the mayor never really set his heart to look deeper into the case and pursue the angle that the brothers introduced in their version of the story when he assumed office. While he sought the transfer of the then chief of police and the investigator who executed the affidavit, there is no proof that the mayor went out of his way not only to extricate the detained inmate but also to serve the ends of justice for the victim.

Perhaps, this new development in the case may serve to answer the questions lingering in the minds of many people. Anyway, it is still not too late in the day to ensure that justice will be served. If this new development leads to the eventual resolution of the case and the unmasking of the other perpetrators as the policeman's affidavit tends to suggest, this is one instance where the grave diggers hit pay dirt.