Crime and the City

What their voices and tenses do not betray,though,is that the students,Muskan and Rithik R Ostwal,are no longer alive. On the morning of October 29,they were picked up near their home on Rangai Gounder Street by a call taxi driver who claimed he was a replacement for the regular driver. He apparently reckoned they’d yield a hefty ransom since they lived in an old,central part of town,attended an expensive school,and their father was a trader with wholesale hardware and textile stores. And “Seths”,as Tamils referred to North Indians,were considered very wealthy.

Two days later,the two children were found floating in a canal near Pollachi,60 km from the city. Rithik was said to have been tortured,and Muskan sexually assaulted. “I don’t know what to believe,” says Unni. “She’s such a responsible girl,and so protective of her brother,I can’t believe she would have got into a cab if she did not know the person. This is the first incident like this in Coimbatore. We’re all shocked.”  

The violent,sensational nature of the crime created a furore in the quietly prosperous town known for being the gracious counterpoint to meaner,coarser Chennai. Residents of Coimbatore are used to being associated with things they can acknowledge with serene pride: The local tongue,all warmth and gentility with its “vaango,pongo” (do come,please go),against Chennai’s guttural,mannerless slurs. The weather,as soothing and mild as its speech. The thriving textile industry,and the manufacturing industries that grew around them since the early 20th century. The reputation for entrepreneurship. The many fine educational institutions,including engineering colleges,ranked among the best in the country. The proximity to bucolic hill stations with colonial refinements on the Nilgiri range — Ooty,Coonoor,Kodaikanal,Kothagiri.  

Residents felt a new destabilising sense of insecurity with the brutality of the crime,and the shock of it occurring in a place where headlines aren’t more eye-popping than the odd chain-snatching of a lady on a walk,or break-ins and robberies in Peelamedu,close to the airport,where wealthy mill owners’ bungalows are located. There was a class element too. There had been a rape-and-murder case four years ago in Omalur,a benighted district with a soaring female foeticide rate near Salem,in which a student in a residential school for Dalit girls had been raped and thrown in a well. But if this could happen to well-off people in one of the busiest,most congested streets in the middle of town,it could happen to anyone.

Thousands of residents took to the streets in a collective show of breast-beating and outrage. Taxi drivers,feeling particularly insecure,demonstrated most loudly of all,and put up posters of the children,adorned with teardrops,which decried the heinousness of the crime.

On November 2,the police produced two accused who’d confessed to the crime — driver Mohanraj (alias Mohanakrishnan) and his alleged accomplice tractor driver Manoharan,both residents of Angalakurichi village in Pollachi district,about 40 km from the city. That created a storm of media rage,and grief gave way to calls for retribution. Eggs were hurled at the accused when they were taken to court shortly after their arrest. When they were taken for forensic tests to a government hospital,policemen had to be brought in to restrain the raging crowd. Women howled,“Hand them to us,we’ll kill them with our brooms!” Men offered to have a go with their fists. Thousands of comments unfurled on the internet,below articles detailing the arrest: “The legal system will excuse such animals.” “They deserve public punishment like in Muslim countries.” “Why not encounter them?” 

On November 10,in the early hours of the morning,the police shot Mohanraj dead,apparently when they were on the way to a crime scene reconstruction. Coimbatore police commissioner C. Sylendra Babu claimed that an unshackled Mohanraj suddenly wrested a weapon from one of the policemen accompanying him,shooting two sub-inspectors,which was why Inspector Annadurai had no choice but to kill him. In “self-defence”,Babu insisted at a crowded press conference.  

Jubilation broke out in the city.

Newspapers spoke of neighbours of the victims’ family bursting crackers and distributing sweets,of taxi drivers descending on the police commissioner’s office with chocolates and crackers. The tragedy seemed drowned out in all the hysterical cheering. School principal Anthony Raj was asked the question so beloved of TRP-hunters: “‘How do you feel?’ they all asked me,” he recalls. “‘Is there 3 per cent happiness? Five per cent?’ Why should I feel happy? Loss is loss,we’re not going to get the children back.”

Today,Rangai Gounder Street’s narrow lanes are wallpapered with posters adorned with portraits of the dead children,flanked by the ubiquitous teardrops,and a roll-call of grinning politicians — Congress MLA Kovai Thangam,who lauded the police action in the state legislature,and others from the UPA and the Shiv Sena.

Not everyone joined in the celebrations. That evening,P Pugazhendi,advocate and director of the Prisoners Rights Forum,filed a petition in the Madras High Court,asking for an impartial probe — currently under way. He demanded that the police officers be brought to book if the killing was proved to be unjustified. “Since 2001,93 encounters have taken place in Tamil Nadu,but they’re on the rise,” he says. “Last year,there were five,before that,four,this year,there have been seven already.” He blames the government for “encouraging encounter killers and giving them awards. They get told,‘kill some rowdies’,and then they go around looking for easy points to score.” The same day,outside the District Court Complex in Coimbatore,20 advocates protested the killing,with posters which said,“Stop encounter culture” and “The court should punish the accused,not the police”.

R Nikkolaus,an advocate and activist with People’s Watch,blames the media for the public’s loss of faith in the legal system,its appetite for summary justice,and its blind,emotional fury towards those who question it. “They’ve got to be neutral,but they go along blindly with the police version,” he says. “A website has a public poll: ‘What should be done with Manoharan,the second accused? 1. Encounter 2. Hanging 3. Life imprisonment. Vote and decide.’ How can they decide the culprit?”  

T Shanmugham,Coimbatore-based criminal lawyer,hotly disagrees. “They were little children,and he deceived them,” he says,as his two young daughters clamour to be heard behind him. “These kind of people should not be allowed to exist.” Does this not put him out of business,as a criminal lawyer? “Oh,I tell my clients,‘Don’t come back here repeatedly. You’ll rot society.’”  

Meanwhile,with Tamil Nadu elections around the corner in May,and with the public still watching,every day,a different politician heads to Rangai Gounder Street to pay the victims’ family a visit. Another personal tragedy lost to political exigencies.