‘Mujhe nahi jamega, bohot dur hai’: A migrant’s dream snuffed out by a lynching in Kerala

Karhi village in Chhattisgarh’s Sakti district. (Express photo by Jayprakash S Naidu)

On December 17, Ramnarayan was lynched in Attappallam, in Kerala’s Palakkad district, by a mob that mistook him for a thief and accused him of being a Bangladeshi.

Home to around 4,000 residents, Karhi is a paddy-growing village. Over the last decade, villagers have made their own arrangements for irrigation, allowing them to sow rice twice a year. Villagers say that most of them choose to stay unemployed for a few months in between the two paddy cycles or work as labourers for the groups that illegally mine sand from the Mahanadi river.

Ramnarayan didn’t have much of a choice. He could have either stayed back in his village to watch his loans accumulate, his two boys, aged 9 and 10, struggle through school and his dream home stuck for want of funds — or he could move to Kerala for a few months.

“He did not want to leave Chhattisgarh. But earlier this year, he fell sick from all that dust at the construction sites he worked on, and had to rest for a month. We borrowed some Rs 60,000 to pay for his medical expenses and run the house. We also took a loan to complete the construction for the home under the PM Awas Yojana. He kept telling me that others from the village were making good money in Kerala and that he would travel there,” says Ramnarayan’s wife Lalita.

Ramnarayan had decided to move to Kerala to fund his sons’ education. (Express photo by Jayprakash S Naidu)

The Baghels live as part of a larger family, with four to five households staying in as many brick-and-asbestos homes next to each other in the Dalit (Satnamis) part of the village.

Ramnarayan, the youngest of the three siblings, owned two small rooms here. The rooms, with exposed bricks, and with dupattas for doors, are mostly bare, except for a cot in one of the rooms and a few utensils and cow dung cakes.

But right in front of these rooms, separated by a patch of scruffy outgrowth, was Ramnarayan’s home that was being built under the PM Awas Yojna. Lalita says Ramnarayan ran out of money after the walls were built.

Three months ago, Ramnarayan and Lalita got in touch with his cousin Shashikant Baghel, 35, who had started as a migrant worker when he was 16 and had done well enough to build a separate home by the main road for his family. Shashikant, who moved to Kerala six months ago, is now a labour supervisor in the state. “Ramnarayan had never worked out of Chhattisgarh. But he said he needed money for his sons’ education, his mother’s health, and to finish his house. He asked me if I could find him some work in Kerala. I said a few others were coming to Kerala and that he could come with them. I gave him Rs 1,500,” he says.

“In Raipur, a skilled worker gets Rs 500 but there is no scope for overtime. If one makes Rs 15,000 a month here, in Kerala, you can make up to Rs 40,000. I have taken 60 people so far to Palakkad,” says Shashikant.

On December 13, Ramnarayan bid his mother goodbye and left in a bus with three others. After a 45-km bus ride to Champa railway station, they travelled two nights and a day, sitting in a general coach of the Korba-Thiruvananthapuram Superfast Express.

“He got a seat a little away from us and mostly sat quietly. While leaving home, he had said he would work hard and earn good money,” says Ranjit.

Ramnarayan’s mother at their Chhattisgarh house. (Express photo by Jayprakash S Naidu)

Five days later, Ramnarayan’s mother received a call from the Kerala Police. She handed over the phone to her brother-in-law Lakheshwar Baghel, 51. “They started inquiring on phone about Ramanarayan’s behaviour… if he has a criminal record, if he got into fights. I told them, no, he is a simple man. And now, he is gone,” says Lakheshwar.