On the morning on March 26, the Muvattupuzha-based Prof T J Joseph, of Newman College, Thodupuzha, went to a friend’s home at Kochi. He stayed there for a while. At 10 a.m., the television channels began airing the news about the public disturbances at Thodupuzha.
Joseph called a cousin, Antony, and borrowed Rs 2,000. At 2 p.m. Antony dropped Joseph at Vytilla and said: “Whereever you are going, do not tell me, because in case the police catch me, I can truthfully say I do not know where you have gone.”
Joseph switched off his mobile phone and got onto a bus that was going to Cherthala. After a few minutes, he decided he did not want to go there since he did not know anybody there. Joseph got down and took a bus to the Town Hall in Kochi. From there he went to Aluva and onwards to Chalakkudy.
“My mind was in a daze,” he says. “I had a fear that I would spend the rest of my life in prison.” And, he was also starving. He had not had any food that day, except a cup of tea. From Chalakkudy, Joseph set out for Palakkad. It was 8.30 p.m. when he reached there. After a meal at the Indian Coffee House, a waiter directed him to a lodge nearby. He checked in and spent the night there.
The next morning, he went to a public telephone booth and called Reena, the wife of a teacher, Raphael George. Raphael had promised to fix up a lawyer, who would file the bail application. Reena said her husband had not come home the previous night. Joseph spent the day at the lodge, incessantly watching the television.
At 8 p.m., he called Reena again and she replied that the papers were getting ready and it would be filed by Tuesday.
Joseph asked about his family and was told that they had gone to his wife Salomi’s parents’ home in Murickassery in Idukki district. “I felt relieved when I heard this,” he says. Reena asked him not to call again.
Immediately, Joseph felt nervous. He wondered whether the police would be able to identify his location from the call he had just made. So he checked out of the hotel and left for Guruvayur at 9 p.m.
“I reached there at midnight,” he says. “I went to several lodges, but all of them wanted me to show an identity card. So I wandered about till 3 a.m. and took the first bus to Thrissur.”
From there he returned to Palakkad and back to the same lodge.
When he switched on the television, he was taken aback when he saw his photograph being flashed on all the channels. “Now, I had to fear the police, as well as the fundamentalists,” he says. “And that made me very sad. The police had so casually put my life at risk. It seemed that I was a person with no value. Without a proper investigation, they had labelled me as an accused.”
Joseph would come to know much later that his brother-in-law, Saju, and son Mithun had been taken into unauthorised custody at Thodupuzha station.
There, the police harassed them physically and mentally, in order to find out the whereabouts of the professor.
Meanwhile, Joseph waited for two days at the lodge, constantly watching the TV channels, to hear about the bail plea application, but there was no news.
He called Reena, but the mobile was switched off. It was at this moment that he discovered an irony: That he was staying in a ‘Muslim lodge.’ Most of the waiters had Muslim names. He called a friend, Michael, in Kattappana, and asked him to check whether anything was being done about the bail application. Michael called, but Joseph’s colleagues gave vague replies.
Joseph had a look of sadness on his face as he says: “Nobody had taken the responsibility of filing the bail application, nor had anybody stood up for me. I had been cast aside. People lacked courage. I realised that I had no option but to surrender.” Michael asked Joseph to come to Kattappana and surrender there. So Joseph went there. However, the Kattappana Circle Inspector said that a lot of paperwork would have to be done, so it was better for Joseph to surrender at Thodupuzha itself. On April 1, the Thodupuzha DySP, K G Simon, was informed. Joseph set out from Kattappana in a taxi. Simultaneously, a police team left from Thodupuzha. Joseph was arrested near Painavu. After spending a night at the Thodupuzha police station, Joseph was produced in court and remanded in custody. He was taken to the Muvattupuzha Sub jail.
In jail for the first time
Joseph was put in a cell with murderers and thieves. They had all heard about his case after reading the newspapers. Normally, when a new person enters a cell, he gets a couple of beatings from the others. “But, because I was a teacher they left me alone,” he says. “Since I had come in after the 5 p.m. dinner, they asked me whether I wanted ‘kanji’ (rice gruel) and I said yes.”
Later, a thief shared a part of his meal. The warden was supposed to give some clothes to Joseph, which had been given by his relatives, but he did not bring it till the next morning.
“Thanks to the insistence of the other inmates, a thief gave me an old ‘mundu’ to wear,” he says. “The convicts behaved well with me. I had entered the jail on April 2, Good Friday, and secured bail only on April 7.”
Immediately after his release, Joseph apologised, through the media, to the Muslim community, the college management, and the people of Kerala.
In a room, at the Specialists Hospital, Kochi, Joseph pauses, and says: “When the fundamentalists pounced on me, I knew in my heart that I had not done anything wrong. I knew that they had not attacked me, but had assaulted the liberal ethos which has existed in Kerala for thousands of years. The edifice of liberalism is crumbling, unless the people can stand up and take a united stand against fundamentalism. Once Basheer had written a short story called, ‘Oru Bhagwad Gitayum Kure Mulakalum. Do you think he will be allowed to write a story like that now?”
It is 10.45 p.m. and Joseph had been speaking non-stop for more than an hour. He looks tired, and is gasping for breath. Suddenly, I commit a gaffe. I present him with my visiting card. He stares at me, points with his eyes at his damaged and immobile arms, and gives a smile.
(Some names have been changed)