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Journalism of Courage
As his cortege crossed into Kannadikkal village in Kozhikode Saturday, scores of people lined the roads, flowers in hand, to bid a final farewell to Arjun, the Kozhikode-based lorry driver who died in a landslide that hit Karnataka’s Shirur on July 16. Still more lined up outside his home in the village.
On Saturday, 32-year-old Arjun, whose body was finally fished out of Gangavali river on September 25, was consigned to flames behind his house around 11.30 am. He was found in the cabin of his timber-laden lorry on its way from Karnataka’s Belagavi to Edavanna in Malappuram when the landslide hit Ankola in Shirur. The discovery put an end to over two months of uncertainty.
Arjun was among 12 who went missing on the morning of July 16. While nine bodies — including Arjun’s — have been found, two remain missing.
At Kannadikkal, thousands — not only from the Kozhikode district but from elsewhere in Kerala too — came to pay their respects to Arjun, the search for whose body gained wide media coverage and kept the state on edge for the last 75 days.
After a DNA test confirmed his identity, Arjun’s body was taken to Kozhikode via road Friday evening, accompanied by Karwar MLA Satish Krishna Sail, who had been camping at Shirur during the earch operations, and Manjeshwar (Kerala) legislator AKM Ashraf.
When the cortege reached the district’s borders early Saturday morning, Minister AK Saseendran, MLAs Thottathil Raveendran and KK Rama, and Kozhikode District Magistrate Snehil Kumar accompanied the body to Kannadikkal.
While speaking to the media on July 19 — three days after the landslide — Arjun’s family said his number was reachable even after the landslide, initially kindling hopes of his being alive.
Meanwhile, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan wrote to his Karnataka counterpart Siddaramaiah to expedite search operations. The state Congress too urged the Karnataka unit to speed up the process.
From August, however, intensifying monsoons over the western coast of India meant the operations had to be halted, and although it resumed on August 12, it had to be suspended only a few days later.
On August 28, Arjun’s family met the Karnataka chief minister urging him to resume the search. Karnataka agreed to pay for a floating craft dredger, which was deployed on September 20 — five days before the body was found.
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