Kerala Professor's Hand Cut Off 13 Years Ago, Main Accused Arrested Today
13 years ago, TJ Joseph, a professor, fell prey to a heinous crime that horrified the entire nation. The assailants had brutally severed professor's right hand, leaving a scar that went beyond the physical realm, traumatizing both the victim and the local residents.
Justice served after more than a decade?
Today, more than a decade later, Savad, who was an activist of the banned Popular Front of India, has finally been arrested.
The gruesome crime was committed for professor's alleged remarks against Prophet Mohammed in a question paper prepared for the internal examination of B Com students at Newman College in Idukki district's Thodupuzha. Savad - carrying a reward of ? 10 lakh for his arrest - was caught from Mattannur in the northern Kerala district of Kannur.
The day of the attack
The professor fell victim to the gruesome attack on July 4, 2010, as he and his family were returning from a church following the Sunday morning mass. The assailants, in a shocking act, had also detonated a bomb before making their escape from the scene.?
The attackers allegedly told him he was being punished for his "sacrilegious" reference to the Prophet in the question paper he had set for second-year students.
A police case was registered the same day in Ernakulam District.?The case was subsequently taken over by the NIA.Nineteen accused have so far been convicted in the case. Of them, three have been convicted for life and ten others sent to eight years of rigorous imprisonment.
All the accused in the case were either leaders or activists of the Popular Front of India or PFI and Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI), and were actively involved in the criminal conspiracy that led to the attack on the professor, the NIA.
The attack on the professor was one of the cases that led to the ban of the organisation.
The question paper, his dismission and then wife's suicide?
"The entire episode started with a question paper that I set for second-semester B Com students for a class test. A question in the paper was to correct the punctuation for the given sentences. In one such sentence, I named a character Muhammad. I named the character very casually and didn't imagine that people would associate it with any religious sentiments," the former college professor had told NDTV.
Soon after the class test, he started getting threats.Amid the controversies, he was first suspended and then dismissed by the college
?Four years after the attack, Joseph's wife Salomy died by suicide in March 2014. Her death sparked huge protests and he was reinstated on the day of his retirement.
With the main accused in custody, legal proceedings are expected to unfold in the coming months. The prosecution will present its case, seeking justice for the victim and closure for the community that has been haunted by the memory of the shocking incident for over a decade.?
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