A 36-year-old farmer and Gulf-returnee, Sangeeth, was killed using a sand excavator when he tried to stop a group of sand smugglers from excavating sand in the cover of night from his 40-cent plot at the back on his house at Amablathinkala near Kattakkada on the outskirts of Thiruvananthapuram.
Though neighbours and relatives rushed him to the hospital, Sangeeth could not be saved.
The incident happened around midnight on January 23. It was Sangeeth's wife who first heard some noises behind their house.
“She went out and saw some men clawing mud from their plot using an excavator. She soon informed Sangeeth, who had just returned from the town. Sangeeth rushed to the spot and asked them who gave them permission to excavate mud from his plot. Then, they began to silence him. They were five or six of them,” Amablathinkala ward member M R Sunil Kumar told Onmanorama.
They threatened him when Sangeeth told them that he would call the police.
He rushed back up, got into his car and drove it right to the entrance of the plot, blocking it. “Sensing danger, the men drove the excavator towards the entrance, knocked down a portion of the perimeter wall and pushed the car away, crushing it. Sangeeth then stood in front of the excavator. But the JCB did not stop and Sangeeth did not move. He kept yelling at them to stop. The bucket of the JCB hit him hard on his head and he was violently thrown aside. The men sped away in the JCB,” Sunil Kumar said.
By then the neighbourhood had come alive but no one dared to come to Sangeeth's rescue.
“The JCB was moving like crazy. People felt that it might run over them and their houses, too, if they stood in the way,” Sunil Kumar said.
The sand smugglers had perhaps hoped they would not be noticed as Sangeeth had recently allowed the Forest Department to take mud from his plot this week.
“That was only for two loads for some social forestry purposes. These men might have thought that they could get away by saying they are working for the Forest Department,” a source in Kattkada police station said.
Police said one man had been arrested and is being questioned for his involvement.
A bike that was found abandoned near Sangeeth's plot was owned by this man. The sand excavator was also found abandoned some five kilometres from Sangeeth's house.
Sangeeth had returned from Gulf one and a half years ago and had taken a bank loan to begin vegetable and poultry farming in the plot behind his house.
“He was doing extremely well. His wife is educated. She functioned as his accountant,” Sunil Kumar said. They have two children, the boy in the first standard and the girl in LKG.