As people gathered in the Thissur District Sessions Court waited for the verdict on the murder of security guard Chandrabose, possibly only one person from beedi tycoon Mohammed Nisham’s family was present inside the courtroom.
Sitting on a bench next to the box for the accused was an elderly man clad in a white shirt and white dhoti.
As everyone waited for Judge KP Sudheer to come inside the court room, we asked him: “How are you connected to the case?”
“I am his uncle, same status as his father. I am Abdul Khader,” came the reply.
When asked what kind of a verdict he was expecting, Khader said promptly and confidently: “We think he will be punished under section 304.” The section of the IPC relates to culpable homicide not amounting to murder. Nisham was accused of murdering security guard Chandrabose. Nisham ran him over with his Hummer in the early hours of January 29, 2015. Chandrabose succumbed to his injuries on February 16.
Chandrabose's wife Jamanthi and mother with Public Prosecutor Udaybhanu
While we waited for the judge to arrive, we spoke to Khader who firmly believed that Nisham would never kill anyone intentionally. “He would not harm even an ant,” he said.
Khader, who runs a shop in Ernakulam MG road, felt that Nisham’s only fault was that he was born rich.
“Chandrabose was a poor man and Nisham a rich man. The public is always jealous of the rich and show extra sympathy to the poor to suppress the rich. My son (Nisham) is a very cultured boy," he adds.
He also felt that Nisham was the bigger victim because once a person dies, people adjust to the person’s absence.
“Once a person dies, the whole family will forget (them) after some months. The pain ends after sometime and the family adjusts to the absence of the person. But Nisham, on the other hand, is being murdered every day. Think about the torture that he and his family go through. He has two children and because of the media attention, they are not able to go to school,” Khader said.
Pointing towards Chandrabose's weeping family – his wife, son and mother – sitting in a corner of the court room, Khader said Nisham too had a mother and a wife. “They too spend their day and nights in tears. Today his wife did not come here, because she was not able to hear all these bad things,” he says.
By this time, judge Sudheer had arrived and within minutes, pronounced the verdict of Nisham being guilty. He was convicted for murder – Section 302 of the IPC. The prosecution and defence lawyers then made other remarks and Public Prosecutor Udhaybhanu sought the death penalty as Nisham’s guilt had been proved beyond reasonable doubt.
After the court proceedings were over, Khader was visibly agitated. In a raised voice, he told reporters outside the court that everything that had happened was an injustice and claimed that Nisham assaulted Chandrabose in self-defence.
Some of Nisham's friends, two brothers and an aunt were present in the court but it was only Khader who spoke to the media.
“Now injustice has been committed against Nisham. He has become a victim. It was an unintentional death. My boy was a little short-tempered, and he might have assaulted the man but I’m sure he would not kill him. Everyone knows that Chandrabose attacked Nisham and Nisham defended himself. It is the right of every individual to defend themselves from any atatck,” he said.
He then went on to talk about what a genuine person Nisham was and that he was essentially a good man.
“A momentary action or accident should not be considered as the scale on which to judge an individual. Nisham is different. He is not what the media portrays him to be,” Khader said.
Before leaving the media, he said that the whole family would stand behind Khader and would do everything they could to give him a new life. “Our support will be there until the end. His brothers and all others in the family will be with him.”