Sheseena Sankar (33) committed suicide in her house in Mokeri, Thalasseri, Kannur district, Kerala. She was one of the students who happened to be in standard six while Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha State Vice President K.T. Jayakrishnan Master was brutally hacked to death on December 1, 1999, while teaching in the East Mokeri UP School.
The unprecedented and inhuman murder in front of students during school has been unheard of in the entire world until then. All witnesses, 17 students in the class, underwent acute mental trauma and had to undergo heavy counselling to overcome the psychiatric issues. Some of them managed to come back, and some others still fight against the odds.
Sheseena suffered the worst sort of mental derailment. She never even went to the school’s vicinity after that rude shock. The very sight of school books made her panic. The same sound of the ambulance shook her with fear. At last, she passed SSLC as a private student. And she studied up to graduation, again as a private student, thanks to the affectionate pressure from the parents and workers of BJP and RSS. But, the depression and mental anguish pushed her to suicide on February 6.
As BJP leader Sandeep Vachaspathi rightly said, even though the CPM killers physically, legally and technically killed only one human being, Jayakarishnan Master, they have assassinated 18 people, that is, Master and 17 students. Sheseena’s suicide should not be construed as one of the several suicides taking place in the state, said, Vachaspathi.
Significantly, Acharampath Pradeep, the first accused in the Jayakrishnan murder case, was later elected to the same school’s Parents-Teachers Association (PTA)!
Some serious aspects have to be revisited against the backdrop of Sheseena’s suicide:-
None of the pro-CPM teachers of the school, colleagues of Jayakrishnan Master, did not show the human gesture of paying the last homage to the slain colleague before the cremation.
After five years-long investigations, the Additional District Sessions Court and later Kerala High Court sentenced five of the seven accused to death under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code. Out of seven, the Sessions Judge acquitted the sixth accused. The Supreme Court acquitted all but one, that is, before mentioned, Pradeep. Later on, he was released.
The Sessions Court Judge who delivered the verdict received several death threats after CPM cadres, led by district leaders, carried out protest marches against the court and the judge. During his protest speech, one leader stated that the death was Jayakrishnan’s fate; hence, punishing the ‘comrades’ was incorrect.
Judge, at last, got a transfer to another part of the state, and he still had to live and work with police escort.
