Jagged Edge Of Terror

• Paul M. George, of the Muthoot group, stabbed to death after he fled a mishap
• Police say a gang of contract killers chased him to extract money
• But he resisted and fought them, and was stabbed to death
• Police have lined up some suspects but are unable to explain the escape of two wanted criminals who are said to have been accompanying Paul

***

The police version is that Paul, who was in a Ford Endeavor, sped off after knocking down a motorcyclist. A gang of goons on their way to execute a contract killing was passing by, and they saw an opportunity to extract money from Paul, not really knowing who he was but assuming from his vehicle he was rich enough to lean hard on. They chased him in their vehicle and blocked his way. But Paul put up a resistance and in the fight that ensued, he was stabbed to death.

But there are too many loose ends to this story. Inspector-General Vinson M. Paul, who is probing the crime, has a reputation for being non-corrupt, but he is yet to come up with answers as to why two notorious gangsters, Om Prakash and Puthenpalam Rajesh, who were travelling with the victim, were allowed to escape. Both were fugitives operating from the safe haven of Dubai. Om Prakash, who was expelled from the pro-CPI(M) Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI), is alleged to have flown in to attend the wedding of the son of a senior Left politician.

Events following the crime exposed the clout of the two gangsters. The question being asked is: why wasn’t a routine wireless alert put out by police immediately after they learnt about the crime? A senior officer told Outlook that even a child-gone-missing complaint generates an immediate wireless alert across the state. Top police officers suspect the lapse was deliberate and meant to facilitate safe passage for the gangsters. The police have picked up a killer gang from Changanacherry in Kottayam district in connection with the murder, but mystery shrouds the escape of the two gangsters who were with Paul and the disappearance of a woman said to have been in their company.

All this has sent shudders down the spine of the average person in Kerala. The new tribe of contract killers, aka ‘quotation’ gangs, is on the prowl and whoever crosses their path risks elimination. The general fear of such goons is accentuated by the political patronage they enjoy, leading to police inaction.

No less a person than state police chief Jacob Punnose has expounded on the mafia stranglehold in Kerala. His initial assessment was that mafia groups commanded an annual turnover of some Rs 50,000 crore. But that seems a conservative estimate. The mafia is in control of big chunks of everything, from land and real estate to prostitution, booze, hawala and financing. According to him, the liquor mafia could be controlling no less than three-fourths of the state’s liquor trade, making several thousand crores a year. Criminologist Dr James Vadakumchery says the biggest threat in Kerala could be what he calls “nexus crimes”—ad hoc coalescing of the neta, the babu, the dalal, and the dada. It’s a frightening pattern, and Vadakumchery says it’s imprinting itself indelibly on Kerala.