When Nikhil was killed on March 25, 2008, he was just 22 year old. He was a truck cleaner by profession and the backbone of a family consisting of his sister, father and mother Syamala. Anil Kumar, Nikhil’s father said he had received several death threats from the party leadership. “CPM leaders threatened me that they would cut off legs and hands of my son unless he withdrew.”
Recalling the incident, his father said, Nikhil was on the way back home after his trip. He was followed by a group of CPM assailants with weapons. They knocked him down and hacked his legs, hip and head. With tearful eyes, he continued, “I have two children, one is daughter. And the other is my son. He is over there, you look.” The family has lost its backbone as he contributed a major share of family”s income.
“I was a communist. But they didn’t give me that consideration. Whenever they came to threaten us, I begged, my whole family is communist but why are you still hounding my boy. He is too young,” Anil Kumar remembers with much anger and pain. But after that incident, my broad family including my brothers and other relatives deserted CPM and en mass joined the RSS.
Whenever Syamala talks about her son, she seems to be very proud of him. He was studying in a certified course in Electronics after successfully completing SSLC.
“He was a good cricket player. He had bagged several prizes and trophies in several cricket tournaments,” she remembers. It was due to his insistence that we could build a new house. He was very much concerned about the future of his sister.
Syamala says, belonging to a communist family, Nikhil’s association with RSS began on a playground where he used to go to play cricket every evening. When local party leaders became aware of Nikhil’s friendship with swayamsevaks, they warned the family against that. “After that they began to isolate us. Thus, eventually my son became an active worker of RSS,” she said.
Some arrests are made in the 2006 case butbereaved parents are still awaiting for justice. Syamala said, they killed him because he was the only swayamsevak in this area. They figured out they could uproot the RSS by killing my son. They were wrong. But what did they achieve? Now all of his friends in “They killed one but hundreds have risen from this village,” his mother’s voice resounded the walls. n
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