Mother slams Kerala govt ad on son’s death

trivandrum — An advertisement in newspapers detailing the sequence of events on the action taken in the alleged suicide of Jishnu Prannoy has been slammed by the engineering student’s mother and family members.

The advertisement titled ‘Jishnu Case — The truth behind it’, has been released by the Kerala government on Saturday which mentioned the action taken by it on the issue.

Prannoy was found hanging in January on the campus of the Nehru College of Engineering and Research, in Thrissur.

Initially, Prannoy’s death was dismissed as a case of suicide, but after his mother Mahija protested, police have taken up the case again as she has been firm on her belief that her son was ‘killed’ by the college authorities.

Speaking to the media, she said: “Right from day one after I lost my son, the case has been turned upside down.”

“It was after 90 days, we decided to come to the state capital to seek justice by staging a protest before the office of the police chief.

“We were stopped and roughed up badly by police. Our family including my son admired Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan but now he says nothing happened to us,” she said.

“But in the advertisement it says the police did not do anything to us... instead we were literally thrashed by police. Why did not the chief minister call Jishnu’s mother at least once,” she added.

Mahija and her brother were admitted in the Medical College hospital after they suffered injuries.

Reacting to the advertisement, media critic C.R. Neelakandan said: “At the height of the Singur struggle, the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) dealt with the struggle through advertisements and in the bargain, that party has literally vanished from Bengal. What’s happening now in Kerala is similar to that and things are going bad to worse for the CPI-M in Kerala.”

Meanwhile, at Mahija’s home near Kozhikode, Prannoy’s sister is undertaking a fast which entered the fourth day. —