Gazing listlessly across the sands and praying hard, fishworker Thelma no longer sees the gulls turning in the sun over a sliver of the Pamba meeting the Arabian sea, across her hut at Thottappally, in Kerala. Somewhere beyond the far waters is her son, 26-year-old Simil, still waiting in a Kuwait jail for word that he may live on— not executed for murder.Some 900 km from Thelma’s home is Ramadevi’s one-bedroom hovel in Sundupalli, off Cuddappah in Andhra Pradesh. The young widow, with children aged six and four, is trying equally hard to come to terms with what she did — pardoning the man who knifed and killed her husband, 31-year-old Suresh, in Kuwait last November, in return for some money that she desperately needed to live on. Suresh was a cook’s help in the resort hotel where Simil too worked, as a janitor.Ramadevi’s pardon on a Rs-100 stamp paper that she tearfully inked, is now Simil’s lifeline that the Kuwait court will look at on March 13. Thelma says her son, who is allowed to call her up from the jail once a week, insists it was an accident.: “He said he was cutting vegetables in his room, and ran with the kitchen knife to the other room hearing his friends there get into a scuffle over a cricket match. The knife in his hand accidentally slit Suresh’s throat, in the melee”.All Ramadevi had got with her husband’s body brought from Kuwait, was Rs 50,000. She had no job or income other than the Rs 2,500 to Rs 4,000 that her husband used to send her, and no savings to survive on. Her husband’s brothers, all manual laborers, were too poor to offer her support. “My husband would not return, no matter whether I forgive Simil or not, and I am told it was an accident. I and my two children had to either take the money offered or starve. I took it. “Kuwait’s Shariah law says that a murder that is not pre-meditated can be excused if the dead one’s immediate kin takes the diyah (blood money) offered and issues a tanazul ( letter of forgiveness) for the murderer.Thelma and her husband Sasi first came to know about Simil’s arrest from a local newspaper, after he was jailed in Kuwait. Simil’s brother Sabu, a truck driver in Kuwait, soon called up to say the only way they could save Simil from execution was to pay blood money and get a pardon from the dead man’s wife, before the Kuwait court heard his case mid-March.They pleaded with their neighbours, local panchayat member P Sabu and a lawyer, S Jyothikumar for help. A local man employed in Hyderabad introduced a Chartered Accountant in Cuddappah, who used his contacts to locate the dead man’s family in the distant Sundupalli village.Simil’s parents and the two neighbours immediately took a train to Cuddapah. “Our other son, Sabu, is still paying back the money he had borrowed to pay an agent Rs 1.5 lakh to get his job in Kuwait — he was fooled, he gets only a Rs 4,000 there. The only thing we own that we could sell to put up the blood money is our own hut, which could fetch a couple of lakh Rupees. We decided to meet and offer it to Suresh’s wife,” says Thelma.That did not work. “Once there, our contact there told us that the dead man’s wife did not want to do it and the relatives and villagers were still furious —we were told they might even kill us and Simil’s parents if we took them there. We stayed on for a few days, sending intermediaries that our contact arranged for us, to keep talking to Suresh’s kin. We were finally told to come back with Rs 6 lakh, not two, if we wanted the signed pardon to save Simil,” says Jyothikumar.“I nearly gave up when they told me that, I just wanted to die. There was no way we could raise Rs 6 lakh. But we still kept begging everyone we know, and time was running out,” says Thelma.That was when local newspapers wrote about it and Kerala’s former CM and state opposition leader Oommen Chandy called up, offering to help. “Chandy talked to a Kerala industrialist in Kuwait who promised to send the money. He then talked to Andhra chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy who asked Sai Prathap Annayyagari, MP of Rajampet, to intervene and negotiate the pardon”.Sai Prathap says YSR took a keen interest and requested his help. “I met Ramadevi and Suresh’s mother Narayanamma. They live in abject poverty. The girl had no idea what had happened to her husband, how he was killed or who killed him. But when she was told about the offer, she readily agreed saying she had nothing to lose by giving a pardon letter in return for money. She badly wanted to secure her children’s future.”But more complications followed. “We went to Cuddappah again, and this time, Suresh’s kin sent word through the MP’s people that the blood money should be Rs 20 lakh. We returned and informed Chandy, who talked again to the Andhra CM. The MP, Sai Prathap, renegotiated with them and they finally agreed to settle for Rs 15 lakh. Chandy called up his NRI contacts in Kuwait and managed to get us Rs 4 lakh more, the Andhra CM and the MP jointly offered to pay up the remaining Rs 5 lakh,” says Jyothikumar.Last week, they took out demand drafts for Rs 5 lakh each in the name of Suresh’s two kids, and went to Cuddappah, where the MP arranged to open an account in the name of the children for a fixed deposit. “He took out and paid Ramadevi and Suresh’s mother Rs 2.5 lakh each in cash, in our presence,” he says.Then came the issue of paying a Kuwait lawyer Rs 6 lakh to appear for Simil there. Chandy, once again, appealed and got Keralites in Kuwait to chip in.The pardon letter has since reached the Indian Embassy in Kuwait and the Ministry of External Affairs is monitoring things closely. Vayalar Ravi, Minister for Overseas Indian affairs, has been backing up the effort through government channels, and had also called on Simil’s parents in Kerala. “We just want him back alive. He would never hurt anyone knowingly. We keep praying that nothing comes in the way now” says Thelma waiting for March 13.
