Bad reporting costs professor his hand

I RATE it as one of the most horrendous incidents of crime reported from Kerala in the recent past. The circumstances in which it happened made it all the more blood-curdling.

Prof T.J. Joseph of Newman College, Thodupuzha, was returning from the church with his mother and Sister Mary Stella, his own sister, when their car was intercepted and he was dragged out and his right palm chopped off.

When I called Sister Stella after a great effort in getting her telephone number, she had not yet recovered from the horrible sight of the hacking off of her brother's hand. She, too, was assaulted when she tried to save her brother from the clutches of the fundamentalist fanatics. The incident reminded me of several scenes in Malayalam movies where the villain's hand is cut off to wreak vengeance.

While art imitates life, in Prof Joseph's case, it was life that imitated art. At the time of writing this column, a week has passed but the Kerala Police have not been able to arrest all the professor's assailants who came in a white Maruti Omni. It is the same police which claim credit for arresting two dreaded criminals who escaped from a high-security prison in the state within a couple of days of the escape. It is a sad commentary on the state of affairs that a murderous gang can attack a person on a public road in broad daylight and speed away to safety.

By now readers have an idea of what led to the attack. Prof Joseph is alleged to have blasphemously referred to the Prophet Mohammed when he prepared a question paper for the B.Com Second semester students of his college. When reports of the alleged blasphemy appeared, many places, including Thodupuzha, witnessed massive demonstrations. The police promptly registered a case against him and very soon he surrendered to the police.

Every channel and newspaper reported that the professor "apologized". On its part, the college promptly suspended him for one year. All this had a salutary effect and passions were cooled. Then, all of a sudden, the Taliban-type attack came flummoxing everyone within and without the state. All through, I had been trying to find out the version of Prof Joseph. Alas, not one newspaper or television channel in Kerala bothered to publish it, though they could have easily accessed him. All they needed to do was to get hold of the written explanation he had given to the authorities of Newman College.

Instead, rumours were allowed to spread. And when rumour-mongers were at work, their imagination knew no bounds and Prof Joseph instantly became a "blasphemer" who did not deserve leniency. Let me be frank, I could never believe that a learned person like Prof Joseph would ever consciously commit blasphemy. He taught in a college named after Cardinal John Henry Newman, one of 19th century's greatest converts to Catholicism, who wrote the most famous poem, "Lead Kindly Light".

Of course, my own effort from New Delhi to get to the bottom of the blasphemy case began only after the poor professor, now battling for his life, "lost" his palm. Doctors are not sure whether they have succeeded in their operation to stitch the severed palm to the hand. They are, in fact, keeping their fingers crossed. Now, let me tell you what actually happened.

There were in all 56 B.Com students appearing for the second semester examination. Out of them, 32 had chosen Malayalam as their second language.