IN COLD BLOOD
SEASONED JOURNALIST V. SUDARSHAN CHRONICLES A SENSATIONAL MURDER CASE THAT ROCKED KERALA IN 1987
On August 18, 1987, M.A. Rasheed, a Kerala-based lawyer, was found dead near a railway line between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Just a few days before his death, he had levelled sensational allegations against R.L. Jalappa, Karnataka’s then home minister, claiming that Jalappa’s men had thrashed him and lodged false cases against him. Dead End: The Minister, the CBI, and the Murder That Wasn’t explores how and why an ordinary lawyer landed at the centre of an extraordinary crime. V. Sudarshan, a senior journalist and author, tries to get to the bottom of it.
In the 1980s, when Karnataka was seeing a boom in the educational space, a minister allegedly used his political might to obtain permission to set up a medical college. This came, it was alleged, at the expense of P. Sadasivan, an educationist—the sanction given to Sadasivan to set up an institute was dismissed as a “typographical error”. The matter went to court. Sadasivan and his men claimed they were hounded, and Rasheed became their lawyer.
The broad elements in the story are familiar—corrupt politicians, sweet deals, hits on rivals, and compromised police officers. The probe made little headway at first. This, we learn, was because the police themselves were allegedly in on the hit. Senior Karnataka officials were also suspected of involvement in suppressing information and abetting the crime, according to the prosecution.
The backbone of the tale is K. Raghothaman, an upright CBI officer solving his first murder case. The book draws mainly from his monograph, the author’s conversations with him and court documents. Raghothaman emerges as the hero, who fights a Sisyphean battle in a broken system.
While Sudarshan relies on paperwork, it seems that he has not interviewed any of the other players in the story. How has the author reconstructed scenes and dialogues in which Raghothaman was not present? Does this mean he has taken creative liberties while recreating some conversations? This remains unclear.
The book moves briskly, and the prose is pared-down and direct. Sudarshan sustains the narrative tension for the most part; will Raghothaman outwit everyone around him or will he fail at nailing a conviction?
By focusing on a single case, the book effectively reveals the nitty-gritty of bureaucracy, justice delivery and criminal trials. We see how crime and corruption can be utterly banal in their day-to-day manifestations. What happens when authorities fail to gather evidence? Why do cases get derailed or witnesses turn hostile?
There’s also a drawback: limiting one’s attention to a single case may mean losing sight of the bigger picture. The narrative suffers when it gets bogged down by details and marginal characters. Why does this murder case merit a full-length book? For the average reader who might have never heard of the incident, the stakes may not seem high enough. ■