Kerala’s United Democratic Front has called for a state-wide hartal on Thursday to protest the police action against a mother seeking justice for her son, who died in mysterious circumstances. Other outfits including the Bharatiya Janata Party and Revolutionary Marxist Party had also called for a strike.

Jishnu Pranoy, 18, was found dead in his hostel room at the Nehru College of Engineering and Research in Thrissur on January 6. His family alleged that he had committed suicide after being tortured by college officials for questioning the conduct of an examination.

With the police failing to make much headway into the inquiry, his mother Mahija
and other family members decided to stage protest in front of the Kerala Police Headquarters in Thiruvananthapuram from Wednesday.

As they walked towards the entrance of the complex, a posse of police personnel stopped them and asked them to disperse. In the ensuing melee, Mahija reportedly fell. She lay down on the road before being dragged into a police van.

“Ninety days have passed since my son died, and you failed to arrest the culprits,” Mahija screamed. “Now you are arresting me.”

She was taken to the Medical College Hospital in Thiruvananthapuram to be treated. She told reporters that the police assaulted her. “They hit me and dragged me on the road,” she said. “They attacked my brother Sreejith.”

Police lapses

Political leaders belonging to both ruling Left Democratic Front and Opposition United Democratic Front have condemned the incident.

The United Democratic Front, led by the Congress (I), called for a state-wide hartal on Thursday. Malappuram district, where the Lok Sabha by-election is scheduled for April 12, has been exempted from the hartal.

Many eyebrows were raised when Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan justified police action. “The police have done their job,” he told journalists in Thiruvananthapuram on Wednesday. “People from outside tried to enter the police headquarters, and the police just stopped them.”

However, veteran Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader and former Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan criticised the police action. Communist Party of India State Secretary Kanam Rajendran joined the chorus of criticsm. “The police should have considered the sorrow of the mother who lost his son,” he wrote in a Facebook post.

Murky death

A native of Kozhikode, Pranoy was a computer science student at Nehru College of Engineering. The police said that he hanged himself inside his room after he was allegedly caught cheating during an examination. But his friends said that Pranoy was badly beaten by the college management for questioning the conduct of an examination by a private agency. He had asked why the college didn’t take the responsibility to conduct the examination.

Last month, the Kerala Police informed the Kerala High Court that Pranoy was tortured with the knowledge of College Chairman Krishna Das.

The police on Tuesday questioned Krishna Das for five hours. He was later released on bail.

Wednesday’s incident came almost a month after Prannoy’s family had met Vijayan in Thiruvanathapuram.

The family had submitted a representation to the Chief Minister, seeking action against the police personnel in Thrissur district who, they alleged, had tried to shield the college management and staff by destroying evidence. They also demanded action against the medical forensic doctors of the Thrissur Medical College who, they alleged, had “deliberately brought in errors” into the postmortem examination. Vijayan had assured them all help to pursues the case.