29.Rajan Case and related incidents

The Naxal attacks in Kerala were mostly held in the Northern districts of Kannur and Wayanad. One such incident was a night time attack on the police station in a place called Kayanna in Kozhikode  district. The  police constable on patrol duty and others in the station were attacked and the Naxalite took away the guns available in the station, it was alleged. The police version  of the case was - during the operation, one of the attackers was killed and then  all of them ran away  his  gun. The Naxals kept a message stating that this is the anniversary of a similar attack at Pulpally. Police suspected the involvement of a few students of R E C Calicut in this incident. The reason for this was obviously the presence of a large number of students from West Bengal studying in REC.

After a day or two, in the early morning around 3AM, students of REC returned to the campus after participating in the B zone youth festival at Feroke College  Kozhikode. As they were coming down from the bus, one final year student named P Rajan was  taken away by the police. The Principal and other faculty came to know about this from other students in the morning and immediately Principal, along with a professor of mechanical engineering reached the nearest police station at Kunnamangalam.  The  police  in Kunnamangalam said they have  no information  on this and suggested that  it is better to enquire at the Special Armed Police (SAP)  camp at Maloorkunnu near Kozhikode  town. They went to the SAP  camp, but  no information was available from there too. Next day, a tailor named Rajan was taken from  his shop  in Chathamangalam  market and also Joseph P Chaly from REC hostels. It was later  known that these three persons, Rajan P, another  Rajan who was running a type writing institute in Chathamangalam and Joseph Chaly, resident of E hostel  were  taken to a police camp set up at Kakkayam. This camp was set up exclusively for questioning those involved in Naxalite attacks. The  chief of the camp was Jayaram Padikkal, DIG Crime Branch.  Jayaram Padikkal was the pet police officer of home minister Karunakaran and had  returned from a special police training at Scotland Yard  when he was appointed as special DIG on his return from UK. One of the torture methods used there was called ‘uruttal’ (rolling) in which the person being questioned or tortured will be made to lie naked on a desk and a wooden roller  rolled  over him from waist to heel by policemen on the victim. Later it is understood that    Rajan(type writing institute) and Joseph Chaly have testified in the court that they had seen Rajan being tortured like this in the Kakkayam camp. It was obvious that Rajan was killed in this inhuman torture and his body was either exhumed and thrown in the dam or sent to the depth of Kakkayam dam tied to heavy boulders. But no parts of the dead body or its remains were available from the investigation subsequently held.

C Achutha Memon  was  the Chief  Minister of Kerala then and K Karunakaranm home minister  in a Congress-Communist alliance  ministry. When the missing case of Rajan  was  moved in the state assembly,  home minister Karunakaran made a statement that he has  not been arrested  by the police.  Subsequently, when this came in the court, he had to accept that Rajan has  been taken into custody by the police at REC campus. Consequent to this, Karunakaran had to resign as minister.

Rajan was the only son of a middle class family with  his aging father  Easwara Varrier, mother and a sister. He was the only hope of the family to survive. Hearing her sons missing case, the mother became mentally deranged and continued like that till her death. Rajan’s father  made several representations and personal requests to the home minister and chief minister. But all his requests fell on the deaf ears of the authorities. They did not even    say a word of consolation to his father. Remember  Karunakaran was hailing from  a family of temple  assistants  (maraar) and Rajan’s father from a similar family (varrier), but  even the fellow feeling of both the families  serving God almighty did not induce a wink of sympathy from   the home minister.

After  the  emergency ( 25^th June 1975 – 21^st March 1977)   and normal  governance returned, Easwara Varrier again  gave a habeas corpus  petition seeking justice to the  High court of Kerala. The court heard his case. The learned judges who heard the case were Hon. Subramonian Potti and Justice Khalid. After years of hearing the   police officers and other witnesses in the court and the arguments, the honourable judges came to the conclusion that  Rajan was taken to police custody and had died  while in police custody.  However, as the dead body was not available as proof of murder(corpus delicti ), the police officers could not  be tried  for murder. They were charged with other offences like illegal detention and torture in custody among others. The conclusions were   clear from the circumstantial evidences.

Consequent to this finding of Rajan’s torture  to death  at the police camp at Kakkayam, detailed hearing of the case  was posted to the Coimbatore court. The   chief of Kakkayam   torture camp  Crime branch D.I.G. Jayaram Padickal, DIG  Northern region Madhusoodhanan, S.P.Lakshmanan and Circle Inspector Pulikodan Narayanan were all convicted   in the case. and was jailed for a few months. As the Madras high  court on appeal  feltthat  they were ‘innocent’ they were  let off. Out of these Lakshmanan   is still alive m but  others  died in miserable ways, suffering for at least  part for the heinous crime  of murdering  the  son of two  innocent parents and the only brother  of a loving sister.  In 1988,  Shaji  M Karun brought out a movie, ‘Piravi’ based on the story of Rajan.

A natural question that was troubling the minds of the public was, after all whether Rajan was a real Naxalite as alleged by the police. As a member of faculty and Warden of one of the hostels at that time, from the information available to us,  my answer is an emphatic NO. For his friends, he was sincere  friend and for teachers he was a humble student, good in studies and talented in fine arts. Probably   the only mistake from his side was that he was a sympathizer of the Communist ideology. It is very unlikely that a youngster of that time who can think independently could not resist being tempted to the ideology of Communism, “take from the rich and give it to the poor” even if they may not fully endorse the way it is done. Another rumour that was heard was that in the B zone youth festival, Rajan  sung a song ridiculing one of the ministers  in the Karunakaran ministry  who had  come for inauguration. The  minister  was V Eacharan and the song  meaning – Is the man who sitting on the golden  throne, a dog or an idiot ( kanaka simhaasanathil kayari  irikkunnavan sunakano verum sumbhano?)

I was  the Warden of E hostel where Joseph Chaly was residing.  Joseph Chaly was also taken to police custody, but probably was spared  extreme torture as his cousin  CA Chaly was a senior officer  in Kerala police  at that time. In fact, I had to prepare a list of items  Chaly had  in his room which contained a large number of books which included those on Marxism and Leninism along with others written by  Gandhi and Nehru. Apparently like  Chaly, Rajan was also a  Communist party sympathiser , probably that was the reason for him being tortured to death  in the  most brutal way, at the hands  of  butchers like Jayaram Padickal.  What happened under emergency in Kerala under home minister Karunakaran was a police raj, nothing else. Any one they wanted were arrested and kept in the custody  without any trial for months. Even the Newspapers were gagged and no news came out.

On the personal side, I was also a witness to be called to Coimbatore, but was excluded in the last minute on my request as I had to go to Delhi for my higher studies and the prosecution thought not much can be gained by presenting me as one of the witnesses. Some teachers who were taking class for Rajan ( Civil  engineering) were  asked to testify in the Coimbatore court with their attendance registers.

Let  me  take  this opportunity  to add  my own few  tears to those  from his  friends and teachers in REC.

Note:  Easwara Warrier died of a broken heart in 2006 without ever discovering this final, horrific detail of what the police had done to his son. It is impossible to read the closing passages of his book, translated beautifully by Neelan, without tears welling up in one’s eyes: (https://thewire.in/books/why-are-you-making-my-innocent-child-stand-in-the-rain-even-after-his-death-2)

“I shall stop. The rain is still lashing out. I remember my son when this heavy rain drums my rooftop, as if someone is opening the locked gate and knocking at the front door . It is not right to write that a living soul has no communication with the soul of the dead.

“I hear his songs from a cassette on this rainy night.I am trying to retrieve a lost wave with this tape recorder . The good earth is getting filled with songs till now unheard by me, this crude man. My son is standing outside, drenched in rain.

“I still have no answer to the question of whether or not I feel vengeance. But I leave a question to the world: why are you making my innocent child stand in the rain even after his death?

“I don’t close the door. Let the rain lash inside and drench me. Let at least my invisible son know that his father never shut the door.”