I filed a civil case demanding compensation for the death of my son. The accused consisted of the Government of Kerala, Mr. Jayaram Padikkal, Mr. Lakshmana, Mr. Kunjiraman Nambiar and Mr. Pulikkodan Narayanan. The case was first filed at the court at Vadakara and later transferred to Calicut as demanded by the accused.
I had to pay the court a huge amount of money as court fees for this case. Since I couldn’t afford to pay the amount, I filed a petition to the court submitting that I am a pauper, hence I might be exempted from paying the court fees. For the court to accept this petition I had to prove that I was very poor financially. But the accused, including the Government of Kerala, argued that I was financially well off and that I had the capacity to pay the court fees. They tried to find out where and how much wealth I had.
The case at the Coimbatore Sessions court was a criminal case. But the case for compensation was a civil case and I was personally responsible for conducting the case. At this time Advocate Eeswara Iyer passed away. So Mr. Ram Kumar alone was looking after the case, and to help him, an advocate from Calicut named Mr. Sreedharan Pillai. The accused had an army of very prominent and efficient lawyers arguing the case for them. The fact that Advocate Ram Kumar argued the case successfully against these prominent lawyers was itself wonderful. The public prosecutor Mr. Achutha Menon appointed by the then Chief Minister Mr. A. K. Antony had argued my case in the criminal trial at Coimbatore. All readers now know the shabby way in which he conducted the case. When these two cases are compared, the discordance in the judicial system is embarrassing to those who wish to see justice done. Nowadays, the practice of changing prosecutors by changing governments, even monthly, is also increasing. When the prosecutor for the notorious Soorya Nelli case was appointed, I wondered what the fate of that case would be- sorry, I am straying away from the topic.
There were almost sixty witnesses in the compensation case. At its conclusion, the court ordered the accused to pay me Rs. 600,000 compensation individually or collectively.
The day after the court verdict, the Government of Kerala started proceedings against me to confiscate my house, for not paying the court fees for the case. The newspapers reported this with great importance. The surprising factor was that never had the government moved so fast and never was its machinery so efficient as in this instance. The bureaucracy was attempting to tarnish the image of the left front government then lead by Mr. Nayanar, state leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). But the Chief Minister could figure out what was going on, and as soon as the news reached him, Mr. Nayanar issued an order to the District Collector in Ernakulam to pay the full amount of compensation due to me. The Collector came to me that afternoon with a draft for the amount, which I cashed, paid what was owed to the government, and saved myself.
