On February 25, Kerala woke up to the news of the death of a former Naxalite and fugitive-from-law, Allunkal Sreedharan. It was a story embellished with details of the bizarre double life he led for 48 long years as a humble worker of the local unit of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and an affable family man in a village in Idukki.
The reports about the death of 88-year-old Sreedharan, an accused in the infamous attack on a police camp in Pulpally in 1968, inevitably became a tribute for a revolutionary who fled Wayanad in 1974 and gave up his real identity for nearly five decades to evade a jail term. Interestingly, he found refuge in a political party that was ideologically opposed to the Left Ultras who pursued the path of violence to shorten the road to revolution, and has been accused of purging them using the state apparatus whenever they could.
The fictional life that Sreedharan led as Nirappel NA Thankappan and his radical past was revealed to the world only when a voice note sent by K Ajitha, a former Naxalite leader, was read out during his funeral on February 25. While his wife Sumathi and children Abhilash and Anitha, who knew him as Thankappan, were there to mourn his passing, his surviving children from his previous life were missing at the funeral.
Jiji Varghese, secretary, CPM, Parathod reading out the voice note of former Naxalite leader K Ajitha during the funeral of her comrade and Naxalite Allungal Sreedharan who lived in disguise for 45 years as an active party member named Nirappel Thankappan, Idukki.@Anjana_Gorge pic.twitter.com/duHIXY96NI
— Sandeep Vellaram(SandeepThomas) (@sandeepvellaram) March 7, 2022
Shailaja, the eldest of Sreedharan’s four daughters living in Pulpally, received a call at 11 am on February 25 informing her of the funeral to be held at 2 pm at Nedumkandam, about 9 hours away. Till that moment the existence of Sreedharan, who went missing in 1974, was not more than hearsay and faith for them.
Sreedharan died on February 24 midnight and if they had been informed on time they could have had one final glimpse of their father.
Allunkal Sreedharan
When Shailaja was five, her mother Sarojini and Sreedharan had migrated to Pulpally from Mundakkayam in Idukki. “The youngest of us, Shiji, was just four months old when our father left us to our fate at Amarakuni in Pulpally, deep inside a forest filled with wild animals,” says Shailaja, who was only 11 when her father went missing. Life wasn’t easy for Sarojini, who had to raise the girls alone after Sreedharan abandoned them. The midnight knocks by policemen in search of Sreedharan — a lone woman and four girls living on a forested landscape — added to their daily panic as they continued to live a life on the edge. Their family was under constant surveillance by the police and the crime branch until they grew up. “There were raids in the night. Amma was often called to the station for questioning and they used to make her wait at the station from morning till night,” says Shailaja, who was married off as soon as she turned 18, since there was no one to support them.
Shailaja particularly remembers a day when the police visited and wanted them to open a large vessel in which boiled raw papaya, to be fed to the cows, was stored. “They suspected that we had hid our father inside the vessel,” she says.
“My mother really struggled to raise us working as a daily wager in agricultural fields. She managed to educate us till Class 10 and marry us off. All of us are now settled with children and grandchildren,” she adds.
Shailaja with her grandson
Shailaja also has a vague memory of a person disguised as a beggar, who came home when their mother was away for work. “He looked at us, spoke sweetly and cuddled the youngest one and then left,” she recalls. It was only later that they realised it was their father.
Sarojini died in 2011 without seeing Sreedharan again and unsure about his whereabouts, though a media interview published in Madhyamam newspaper in 1998 without revealing Sreedharan’s identity gave credence to the view that he was alive. They also got to know through a relative that their father was alive and residing somewhere in Idukki. “We really wanted to see him but everybody discouraged us as there was a lookout notice for him. We didn’t want our father to be caught because of us. Every time I met someone from Idukki, I used to tell them that my father lived somewhere there,” she says. Shailaja’s husband Kumaran had once gone to Idukki with friends but they could not find Sreedharan as he was living in disguise.
“My mother struggled a lot and it had a huge impact on her mental health. In the last stages of her life, she suffered mental health issues, including depression and anxiety,” she says. Sarojini had no memories while she was on her deathbed.
Shailaja and her sisters had fervently hoped that their father would return to them one day. “The news of his death was so devastating. No matter how upset we were with him for abandoning us, we would have gone to see him. He was our father and no grudge or anger can change our love towards him,” she says. Had they been informed on time they could have attended the funeral, Shailaja adds.
Shailaja, however, feels that the pain they feel at present is less compared to the sufferings they went through while growing up. “Living without a father, we all were emotionally paralysed. Now, it hurts to learn that all this while he was living under an assumed identity with another wife and two children. Nobody thought of even giving us a chance to see him once. In the end, it is we who still carry his surname and identity,” she says, adding that her family is ready to meet Sreedharan’s children from his second wife if they agree.
Talking to TNM, Jiji Varghese, secretary of the Parathode local committee of the CPI(M), says that Sreedharan, whom they knew as Thankappan, was a brave comrade and a down-to-earth and kind person. “He maintained close friendships and relationships with local people, including members of the opposite party. He served as the local committee member of the Parathode unit twice,” Jiji says.
Jiji informed Ajitha about Sreedharan’s death after two persons, who were close confidantes of the ex-Naxalite, revealed the secret as his death wish – perhaps in the hope of perpetuating a glory that eluded him during his lifetime. Ajitha says she became speechless on hearing this.
Allunkal Sreedharan’s funeral
“I felt numb when I heard about Sreedharan. I was under the impression that he had bid adieu to the world long back. He was a brave and dynamic comrade who was part of the Naxalite movement in Kerala in support of the farmers. I have included an account of his contributions in my memoir,” Ajitha tells TNM.
The attack on the Malabar Special Police (MSP) camp near Seetha Devi Temple in Pulpally on November 24, 1968, which resulted in the death of two policemen, is considered a turning point in the history of Naxalism in the state. The violent attack, which happened before the formation of the all-India coordination committee of the Communist Party of India (Marxist- Leninist) under Charu Mazumdar, was undertaken by Naxalbari Karshaka Samara Sahaya Samiti, led by comrades with extreme views who broke from the undivided Communist Party of India.
Apart from Sreedharan, the Naxalbari group that took part in the attack included Ajitha, who was then 18, her parents Kunnikkal Narayanan and Mandakini, A Varghese – who was later eliminated in an extrajudicial killing (“fake encounter”), Philip M Prasad, Sukumaran, Kunjiraman, Master Sankaran and Thettamala Krishnan Kutty. The attack was planned after migrant farmers in Pulpally sought their support to tackle the eviction threat by Pulpally Devaswom and the Forest Department with the help of MSP. They later attacked the houses of two landlords, Airady K Dasan Chetty and Veerady Thimappan Chetty, and distributed the food grains stocked there to the tribal people.
As per Ajitha’s memoir, when their plan to attack police stations in Thalassery and Pulpally failed after the death of one of their leaders in a bomb explosion, the group’s morale was shattered. Sreedharan, who was among the few who stood strong with the movement, managed to escape through the forest. But he could not evade the law for long. He was arrested near Iritty and tortured by the police at sub-jails in Manathavady and Vythiri. He was then moved to Kannur Jail along with Kunnikkal Narayanan. After he along with 60 others were acquitted in the case, he returned to his home in Pulpally. But in 1974, he decided to leave his identity, family and home when he felt that he would be incarcerated again based on the verdict of an appeal filed by the government in the Kerala High Court against the acquittal. He moved back to his home district from where he had migrated and assumed the identity of Nirappel NA Thankappan, working in plantations as a labourer initially and later became a cardamom farmer.
In an anonymous interview published in 1998, Sreedharan had revealed that life in Pulpally was tough for him post-jail term as he was under constant police surveillance. MJ Babu, the interviewer and former Idukki bureau chief of Madhyamam, reached out to Sreedharan through his friend Kanjar Jose. “Jose told me that Sreedharan was living under a false identity in a sleepy village named Mavady in Nedumkandam. The next day, we went to his home and he was ready to talk to us only if we promised not to disclose his identity until his death. After the interview was published, a group of people from Wayanad reached Thodupuzha and asked for his whereabouts. Even the special branch officials asked. But I kept my promise. He wished the world to know his real identity posthumously,” he tells TNM.
The district special branch has now begun a probe on how Sreedharan managed to live a secret life for more than four decades. An officer of the special branch says they are collecting all details to verify the claim. “After collecting the details we will submit a report to the government. First, we need to confirm that the deceased man was indeed Allunkal Sreedharan. Normally in such cases we need to submit the death certificate of the person before the court and close the case file. But in this case, the death certificate will be issued under the name of Thankappan,” the official says.