I first met Chandradas on a blisteringly hot Sunday afternoon. After I lost my way a couple of times, Chandradas had walked all the way to the nearest road to guide me along. His home in Iverkala was miles away from the traffic and turbulence of Puthoor town’s junction. The air there had a tranquility that unsettled me as we sat down to talk about the unsolved rape and murder of his daughter, Vijayalekshmi. Her body was found in a sack not far from here 17 years ago.

On December 22, 2006, the 23-year-old Dalit woman left home in the morning for the cashew factory where she worked. She never returned home. Vijayalekshmi was found dead the next day, near a brick factory. The killers had stuffed her body into a sack and sunk it to the bottom of a pond using rocks and bricks from the nearby factory.

The police arrested Mehbul Haque and Bullu Haque, two Bengali Muslim migrant labourers, in connection with the crime. Mehbul was charged with the rape and murder of Vijayalekshmi by the Sessions Court, Kollam, and sentenced to rigorous life imprisonment. In his statement, Mehbul had alleged that it was his employer, Ajithkumar, and his friends, Pushpakumar and Rajesh, who committed the crime. He made the shocking claim that his upper caste employers had forced him to hide the body of the dead woman.

Much of Mehbul’s testimony and cross-examination was lost in translation, and as a result of poor legal representation. The court did not give much weight to his claims and the men named by him were never investigated. As for Bullu, the court pronounced that the prosecution had failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt that he had committed the alleged offences, and hence he was acquitted.

In 2015, after spending more than eight years in prison, Mehbul was found not guilty and released by the High Court of Kerala. He owes his freedom to a Kerala journalist who went beyond her call of duty to help him fight the case. The Kerala police has challenged the verdict in the Supreme Court.

I couldn’t trace Mehbul’s current whereabouts. Meanwhile, Chandradas is desperately trying to reopen the case as he believes, vehemently, that Mehbul was only a scapegoat and that the real culprits are out there, free.

The murder

In 2006, Puthoor, a small town located a little over 20 km from Kollam, was still in its era of being the brick manufacturing centre of Kerala. It was known for its extensive brick industries, owing to the Kallada river flowing right through it. Puthoor also had a significant number of cashew factories, underlining Kollam’s status those days as the ‘Cashew capital of the world’. In all other ways, Puthoor was just another small town, like umpteen others in the state.

When Mehbul Haque arrived in Puthoor from West Bengal in 2006 to work in that thriving brick industry, he was only 24. Along with his relative Bullu, he took up a job at the Sreedevi Brick Factory, owned by Ajithkumar.

At the time, Chandradas was one of the activists protesting the lack of availability of drinking water due to excessive sand mining by the brick factory owners — mostly upper caste men.

Vijayalekshmi was the third of Chandradas’ four children — a son and three daughters. He recalled her as a mature, responsible young woman, quite capable of making decisions for herself.

Chandradas’ family had traditionally been involved in farming, like much of the population in Puthoor. Belonging to the Dalit community of Sidhanar, the family was part of the blue-collar working strata. Like a high percentage of the female workforce in Puthoor, Vijayalekshmi and her mother Bhavani were also employed in the cashew industry.

Sasikumar, Vijayalekshmi’s elder brother, fondly remembered his sister as a strong, independent, and entrepreneurial person. At 23, despite societal pressure, Vijayalekshmi was in no hurry to get married, and invested wisely in local financial schemes, hoping to renovate their house before settling down.

“Any other young woman would have succumbed to peer pressure to get married instead of working and earning, but not Vijayalekshmi,” he reminisced.

On the day of her death, both Vijayalekshmi and Bhavani left for work at 7 in the morning as usual, but only Bhavani returned home.

Chandradas looked back on the events of that day: “My wife was surprised that Vijayalekshmi hadn’t reached home even though it was 6.30 pm already. They left the factory together at 5.30 pm, which was located a little over 4 km from our home. She went to the market whereas Vijayalekshmi, who was with her friend and coworker Latha, was supposed to return home directly.”

He went looking for her at this point and although a few people remembered seeing Vijayalekshmi near the Njankadavu bridge earlier, the search proved futile. Chandradas immediately went to the Sasthamcotta police station and filed a missing complaint. Along with the police, the family conducted a few more inquiries that evening. Latha also confirmed leaving the factory with Vijayalekshmi before they parted ways en route.

Chandradas returned home half-heartedly, having decided to resume the search early the next morning. He described the events that happened the next day, December 23, as follows:

“My first stop was naturally at a tea shop near the bridge where she was said to have been last seen. By then, the news of my daughter’s disappearance had reached the local people and I could sense that they were all discussing it. On further enquiry, I came to know that she was seen between 6 and 6.30 pm near the tea shop, walking towards the bund road which provided a shortcut to our home, the same route she took daily. I shifted my focus to that road then, which was less than a kilometre from my home in Iverkala.

“The region around the bund was quite isolated, with only the Sreedevi Brick Factory on one side and empty space to store the bricks on the other side. The whole area was overgrown and dense with weeds.

“Meanwhile, Ajithkumar, the brick factory owner, and Pushpakumar, the manager of the factory, came by on a motorbike. They couldn’t offer me any new information but seemed quite keen on helping me with the search. They left soon after and as I was inspecting the premises in detail, I came upon something that caught my attention.

“On one side of the bund, I could see footprints in the mud and signs of something being dragged over the grass. I walked further along the bund and noticed fresh signs of the ground being disturbed in a certain area. I alerted the Sasthamcotta police around 8 to 8.30 am — but they didn’t reach the scene before 10 am. Next, we arranged for someone locally to dive and search under the water. The diver discovered a heavy sack immersed 5–6 feet under the water almost immediately. The Circle Inspector was notified subsequently, and the sack was recovered and opened in his presence.