Book Review by KPP Nambiar
Title: The Stolen Necklace: A Small Crime in a Small Town
Authors: Shevlin Sebastian and VK Thajudheen
Publisher: HarperCollins India
With an enigmatic cover, reflecting the nature of the content, this is the true story of a small-town crime. A gripping narrative, it is the poignant saga of an innocent citizen, forced to suffer incarceration due to the mishandling of a theft case by the police.
Veteran journalist Shevlin Sebastian, and businessman, VK Thajudheen, are the authors. Thajudheen is the kingpin of this book, and also the victim. The incident took place a few years ago in the historic town of Thalassery in north Kerala.
Shevlin is based in Kochi, which is hundreds of kilometres away, in the south. Shevlin and Thajudheen came together following the media hype. With his impressive credentials, and long-standing in the journalistic field, Shevlin has proven his mettle by publishing more than 4500 feature articles in reputed periodicals. He has authored four children’s novels also.
Thajudheen, around whom the thriller revolves, has his home in Kadirur, a suburb of Thalassery. A middle-class businessman in Qatar, he had left his family of wife and three children at Kadirur. A God-fearing upright man, he is middle-aged and balding. His courage led him to an adventurous love marriage with his teenage sweetheart. Nasreena, being from a financially backward family, the alliance was considered of low status for his wealthy family.
Nevertheless, he had the temerity to ignore and disobey even his patriarchal father, in carrying on his long affair. However, before his secret wedding, his father passed away. Even then Nasreena had to wait for three years to be accepted in his home. That was after the birth of their second child – a son. The arrival of a boy child in his family after a long gap, mellowed his mother and two sisters who changed their hostile attitude against Nasreena.
All this happened years ago. Meanwhile, Thajudheen had a checkered career spread over different locations, which ended up with a business in Doha. That was when he fulfilled his dream of marrying his daughter to an eligible young man, Shiraz Abdulla.
The tragic turns of events, entangling Thajudheen in the stolen necklace fiasco, commenced a couple of days after the celebration of Thazleena’s wedding. The family was returning from his sister’s home after a sumptuous dinner hosted for the newly-wedded couple.
It was a rainy night. Suddenly, they spotted two police jeeps with eight occupants waiting near their Kadirur home. Three of the men were in uniform. The rest were also from the same genus, it was revealed. They were from a station outside Kadirur police control called Chakkarakkal. Stopping their car, their leader, approached the family with an expression of “You are all prey. I am a lion looking for a meal”.
Biju, having already earned a name as being reckless in controlling crime, was a known terror. He and his team had arrived armed with a phone evidence showing that Thajudheen was the culprit in a necklace-snatching crime. The incident was reported in his station a few days back. The CCTV camera that showed the purported thief cannot lie, they thought. It showed someone exactly resembling Thajudheen! But was it Thajudheen?
Thus started the ordeal of an innocent family man in the presence of his loving wife, and children. After a heart-breaking scene, near his home, Thajudheen was offered a compromise — pay the price of the stolen necklace and avoid litigation.
The offer was with a friendly ‘advice’: “I heard your daughter has just got married. The reputation of your family is at stake. We will inform the media that you are the thief.”
Anyone with a chicken heart would have yielded, but not Thajudheen, who always admired his late father for standing up to injustice. That was how Thajudheen had to languish in Thalassery sub jail till the story led to the final proverbial ‘happy ending’, nearly seven weeks later.
As a remand prisoner Thajudheen had the most undesirable company of robbers, underworld gang members, sex offenders, political workers, and so forth. At the same time, outside, his shattered family and Abdulla, the father of Shiraz, Thajudheen’s son-in-law, did not leaving any stone unturned to unravel the mysterious crime. They were making all-out efforts to obtain bail as well.
But Sub Inspector Biju was not to give up the big catch that easily. The police were even trying to trap Thajudheen in some other unsolved cases as a possible culprit.
This included even a murder case where the perpetrator was missing.
Ultimately, when the higher court decided to let him free, the readers, along with Thajudheen himself, are left to wonder about the dispensation of justice by the police in a democracy. It is true that the politicians, the legislature, and even the Chief Minister had to interfere in ensuring proper investigation in this case. But still the question remains: what can one do to enforce timely change in the method of handling of criminal cases by the police?
Imprisonment of innocents and their vindication in the end is nothing new in the annals of ‘crime and punishment’. Fiction being a reflection of fact, such cases are not uncommon in world literature. Inspector Javert of Victor Hugo’s ‘Les Miserables’ (1862) can very well match up with the modern-day Biju, the sub inspector.
Likewise, in Leo Tolstoy’s short story, ‘God Sees the Truth but Waits’ (1872), a young merchant named Ivan Dmitrich Aksionov was accused of a crime he did not commit. One can see the forerunner of Thajudheen! After all, human nature is basically the same whether in France, Tsar’s Russia or India.
Undoubtedly, Shevlin and Thajudheen have succeeded in bringing out the darker side of the police force. However, though the narrative is touching, one wonders at the intent of the book. Have the authors succeeded in openly projecting the atrocities of the police force to draw the attention of the establishment to prevent such incidents in future? Apart from presenting the insensitive and sadistic attitude of Sub Inspector Biju, little effort seems to be expended to indict the system to which he is linked. The fact that Biju is ‘punished’ for his ‘crime’ by just a transfer and withholding a few increments is an eloquent testimony to the laissez-faire attitude of our society at large.
Dr. KPP Nambiar, formerly a Consultant/Technocrat at the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, is the author of many scientific papers and books, including a 1500-page Japanese-Malayalam dictionary.
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