For the unsuspecting outsider, the red blotch on the street might, for a second look, like the paan spittle spluttered from a dozen or so mouths. People do spew at others in the height of a flare-up, but here the degree of rancour is several hundred times more than what a chewed betel leaf can symbolise. For, this is blood. The shuddering remains of a life that met with a violent end — and often for reasons that don’t convincingly match up to the degree of the crime whatsoever.
If the murders in present-day Tirunelveli are chilling, their frequency will make you believe that killing fellowmen has become a cool thing in this southern district of Tamil Nadu. The place has turned into a theatre of violence, where the aruva is more a cultural metaphor. The elongated sickle can drop a man dead in one swing…and many are falling victims to this scary trend.
For quite a while, a clutch of films have portrayed its brutality and regularity — Subramaniapuram, Sevalaperi Pandi, Samy, Tamarabarani and Tirunelveli. But more than the silver screen, one gets a better perspective by talking to the man on the street. “Murder is a common thing in our district,” says Ramesh, a local auto rickshaw driver. “If anyone gets angry, he immediately picks up his aruva and just kills.”
And even a casual look at the police records would verify any doubt about this being an exaggeration. It’s all there in black and white: 60 killings have happened in the district in the last seven months of this year. A comparison with 2008 will show that, if anything, there can only be a rise in the figure: it was 84 last year. The only thing unclear is where the killers lurk.
Only last month, on a leisurely Sunday morning, Sivasamy encountered such a situation. A prominent member of the local Thevar community, he was at a teashop in Malapalayam on July 19, going through the newspaper when a group of his relatives walked up to him. Sivasamy looked up and then turned his gaze back onto the paper, as he was not on good terms with the folks. But before the onlookers could realise what was on, one of the relatives pulled out that long sickle, chopped off Sivasamy’s head and fled. It was a case of family vendetta, as Sivasamy is said to have orchestrated the murder of a relative, Murugan, in 2006.
Murugan had attacked Sivasamy’s father, Arunachala Thevar, more than four years ago. “Our father did not want any violence in retribution to the attack,” recalls Marmimthu, Sivasamy’s brother. “So, he took us five sons, including Sivasamy, all the way to Kashi in 2005 and made us take a pledge in front of a deity that we would no more indulge in any kind of savagery.”
Sivasamy stuck to his vow. He even became a vegetarian and started spending time reading spiritual books. But Murugan wouldn’t allow his family to live in peace. “He continuously gave us trouble; finally provoked Sivasamy by threatening to kill us,” notes Marimuthu. That’s when Sivasamy hired a few henchmen to kill Murugan — in 2006.
A grieving Arunachala Thevar made his sons pay Rs 5 lakh as compensation to the bereaved family besides an assurance that they would fund the education of Murugan’s children. Yet, a few other relatives of Murugan avenged the murder by hacking Sivasamy three years later.
Love-fuelled incidents too spell violence. Four members of a family near Valliyoor hacked each other to death following a fight over the eloping of a girl and a boy, both relatives. Another incident — at Athanallur in March — saw five relatives hacking each other fatally following a property dispute.
Again, Kaduvetti village near Nanguneri saw V Challapandy (40) murdering his brother V Ganapathy, eight years younger, following a quarrel over stacking harvested paddy in an ancestral property.
The case histories point to a deep-seated social malaise. The mindless killings can be borne out of caste conflicts or a compulsion for upholding the ‘family honour’, besides the more usual reasons like illicit relations, family squabbles, land disputes and even over petty quarrels. But all these boil down to a startling fact: the people of the district have lost faith in the rule of law.
In fact, the local community does not look down upon a murderer. On the contrary, he is sort of a hero and looked at with respect — a social attitude that breeds more violence. Reveals a senior advocate: “Most of the people in the district will have at least one big-size sickle in their house. It’s part of our culture.”
The reasons for provocation can be flippant as well. A reformed criminal from Valliyoor recounts that he murdered a cable TV owner in 2004 only because “my close friend told me”. The pal had just paid Rs 50 to foot the travel expenses after the execution of the murder. “Our gang, brandishing weapons roamed about the streets, and no policeman even once dared to approach us.”
Not surprisingly, convictions are appallingly low. The accused were punished in only 40 per cent of murders between 2003 and ’07 in the district. The loose law, naturally, emboldens the criminals.
Senior police officers in the district admit that most of the accused in murder cases are released from jail within a few days because either the witnesses turn hostile or are bought over. The police also lament that most of the notorious history-sheeters booked under the Goondas Act manage to get a reprieve from the High Court by some flimsy reason or the other. Last year, the department booked 60 goondas under the Act, but 36 of them were released in four months. This year, 25 rowdies have been booked so far, but 11 of them were released within four months.
There is the allegation that the accused are also people not connected to the crime. Unable to crack a case when they are already faced with lack of manpower and time, the cops are forced to somehow foist cases on someone with a criminal record. It’s another matter that the arrested person also manages to walk free as the prosecution would fail to prove his involvement in the crime.
Take for instance the case of Kannappan and Ramu (name changed). The two reformed Tirunelveli criminals claim they served prison terms for crimes they never committed. Once a criminal completes a jail term, the police keep a track of them and, on failing to solve a case, approach them to simply “surrender”.
Further, the police lack in coordination between its wings. That’s how killings happen despite the intelligence wing anticipating them and even passing on the information to the law and order wing. Even Sivasamy’s murder was something the intelligence officers knew in advance, yet it could not be prevented.
So, are Sivasamy’s brothers planning to avenge his murder? Marimuthu is clear: “Our children have all studied engineering and are doing well. We are not keen on taking revenge. But if the killer escapes the law, then we will ‘act’.”
(To be concluded next Saturday.)
— gogul.vannan@gmail.com
The big murder mart: Economics and sociology
The name Tirunelveli evokes varied images in the minds of different people. Many treat its eponymous halwa, the soggy sweetmeat, as quintessentially Tirunelveli. A journalist, who hails from there, takes pride in reiterating the sobriquet “Oxford of South India” that Tirunelveli has earned as a seat of learning where the male literate population is 83 per cent. But it is also the place where one can go headhunting for a killer.
One can easily contact contract killers, adept in the art of swinging the aruva with a precision. “It is like a cottage industry out here,” says a man, who also introduced a contract killer to this reporter. So, what’s the rate like? Is Rs 10,000 a decent sum? The killer scowls: “With that money I can’t even buy an aruva. Give me one lakh (rupees), I shall do it with precision.”
In reality, that’s a reasonable amount what with several businessmen, industrialists and other affluent persons having stakes worth more than a lakh of rupees in letting a person walk the earth.
One such murder rocked the district almost five years ago. Former minister Aladi Aruna was hacked to death in December 2004 by a gang of hired hoodlums. The prime accused, Val Durai, had confessed that Rs 5 lakh was paid to the gang by local educationist S A Raja.
The contract killers even travel elsewhere on duty. Gandhi, owner of a Madurai-based local channel called Vaigai, was hacked to death inside his office in 2005 by men from Tirunelveli and its neighbouring Tuticorin districts for a sum of Rs 75,000. Even businessmen based in Mumbai use the services of killers from Tirunelveli. In fact, there is a strong network of local politicians and businessmen with Mumbai-based persons, hailing from Tamil Nadu, through which many transactions take place.
But then, not all contract killings are blatant. Some are executed with subtlety as is evident in the case of Manuvelraj who fell in love with a Dalit girl. Some family members of the girl paid Rs 1 lakh to a gang that knocked him off with a tractor and made the killing look like a road accident.
According to some local police officers, the contract killers were bred in a culture of prolonged communal conflicts. Trained by the caste leaders as henchmen to strike at members belonging to rival caste groups, the youth, who are otherwise unemployed, find a new job opportunity in contract killing.
If not many ‘orders’ to kill are at hand, the youth also make money by playing proxy to erring businessmen. For example, when a rich businessman is wanted by the police in a case relating to an accident at a worksite, the youth ‘surrender’ in court owning up to the crime.
It has become a common occurrence in windmills, located in the areas bordering Kanyakumari district, where accidents happen regularly.
For instance, a blast occurred at a windmill construction site, and a contract killer surrendered in an Andhra Pradesh court. The windmill owners paid him Rs 1,000 a day for 20 days in the jail, says a police officer. As the case is fought in court, the company will go for a settlement with the victim’s family and have the case closed.
— GV