Cover Story : “We are silenced. We are not supposed to speak”

Muzhappilangad is a communist party village in Thalassery, where Sooraj lived and volunteered the RSS work. An auto rickshaw driver by profession, Sooraj was a CPM cadre in his early years. But later he abandoned CPM after being getting fed up with the evil practices of the party.
There was a murder attempt against him in 2004. Attackers in the guise of travellers hired his auto for a trip to an interior village. The travellers attacked him from back, while he was driving auto rickshaw. But he escaped. He was again targeted next year; this time fate was against him.
“We were looking for a bride for him. We had proceeded with a marriage proposal and the engagement was almost fixed in 2004. But he was attacked soon after that. So we couldn’t take it forward,”  his mother Sathi recalled.
He used to speak out his bitter experiences with CPM at public platforms. His brother Sudheesh remembers, “He was very courageous and fear had no place in his life. May be that is why he has lost his life. He never surrendered to the threats of CPM.”
“My son started to walk after the first attack only because of his will power,” Sathi recalls.“After the first attempt, we were under police protection for many days. When I think of those days, it still sends shudders down my spine,” she adds. Sooraj organised a spectacular Sri Krishna Jayanti Sobha Yatra (processions) during 2003-04, which brought him into the top hit list of CPM.
On August 7, 2005, in the morning, Sooraj went out to buy milk as usual. It was not too far from his house. “Somebody nearby our house must have informed the gang. They surrounded him and uleashed a brutal attack. He couldn’t resist anymore,” his brother said. He was severely injured in a vicious attack with swords. Before the gruesome attack, they blasted a bomb to create panic among the crowd. The party goons were called from another village called Kuttimangunnu to execute the heinous plan. It was CPM’s permanent team of criminals led by Sahadevan and Mathai Suni, said a RSS leader.
His mother has become more quiet after that day. “It is a party village and here we are not supposed to speak up. We are silenced. I always avoid talking about these incidents to media because of fear. n