A Hindu family in Thiruvananthapuram paid a very high price for showing consideration to some Muslim laborers working in a neighboring tract of land. Manorama, a 68-year-old retired government employee from Kesavadasapuram in the city, was brutally murdered on Sunday (August 7) afternoon by migrant worker Adam Ali (21). 

The criminal brutally attacked Manorama, tied her legs, choked her to death, dumped her body in a nearby well, stole her ornaments, and escaped the crime scene. Ali boarded a train to Kolkata but was arrested at Chennai Central railway station. 

Manorama and her husband, Dinaraj, are former education department officers. Police confirmed that a worker from West Bengal who came to work on a house under construction near Manorama’s house is behind the murder. Ali and his colleagues were given access to the victim’s property to use their well to get water for drinking and cooking.

The unfinished building where Ali worked offers a view of the elderly woman’s garden and hall. On Sunday at 9 am, Dinaraj left for Varkala to attend a ceremony at their daughter’s house. The killer watched from the building construction site. There was no work because it was a Sunday. Ali went to Manorama’s house around 1 pm and murdered the helpless victim.

Neighbors called Dinaraj and told him they heard screams from the house. Dinaraj asked them to check, but the neighbors left when no one opened the door. When the police arrived and checked, they found that Rs 50,000 kept in the house was also missing.

Ali killed Manorama in her kitchen, stole her six-sovereign gold chain and earrings, dumped her body in a well, and escaped. Police collected CCTV footage from a neighboring home showing Ali dragging Manorama’s body and throwing it into a well.

Ali’s roommates said he was a habitual offender and a PUB-G (mobile game) addict. The convict destroyed his mobile in a rage two days ago when he lost money in PUBG. He also had a habit of changing SIM cards regularly.  

After committing the murder, Ali called a few friends and asked them to arrange a new SIM card and a mobile phone. But he left before they could arrange them. Five West Bengal natives living with Ali have also been detained. 

There are allegations that the Kerala police acted slow, leading to the murderer escaping by train from Thiruvananthapuram. 

Several intelligence reports had warned the Kerala government that Rohingyan terrorists from Bangladesh had made Kerala their home. The CPM-led communist government took no action. Such matters are discussed only when these criminals indulge in heinous crimes and are then forgotten again. 

Local Islamists and the communists call such laborers ‘guest workers’. Many of these ‘Bengalis’, as they are known locally, indulge in violent crimes and escape through our porous borders into Bangladesh. During the triple lockdown period, such criminals organized themselves and rioted against the police.

A weak police force returned the favor by ‘awarding’ them television sets and carrom boards. The CPM government promoted such violent criminals by giving them free rations and cooked food. When the emergency train services began, those who returned to West Bengal were given chicken biriyani, bread, bananas, and bottled water. Ministers, CPM leaders, and top police officials made a beeline to the railway stations to affectionately send them off. 

Rules suggest that the government maintain a register of such workers. Even after many crime reports, no such updated register is available with the police or the labor department. In contrast, the decent ones who come looking for jobs register, the criminals, mainly from Bangladesh, do not. There is no way to arrest such criminals once they escape from Bharat.  

There are around 5 lakh registered ones in Kerala out of an estimated 30 lakh guest workers. Unemployment is rampant, yet there are many guest workers in a state with a local population of just 3.5 crores. Keralites prefer slave labor in gulf countries but do not work for a living in the communist state.

Most guest workers stay and work in the buildings that they build. Criminal-minded ones go back home and return unhindered at will. They indulge in terrorism, murder, rape, robbery, and the drug trade. These ‘guests’ indulge in large-scale riots and violence whenever locals oppose their crimes. Incidentally, most of the victims of such crimes are Hindus. 

They have a history of beating up police and have even burned police vehicles recently. Big and small businesspeople and terrorist masterminds try to whitewash such crimes for personal gains. Police and the government wash their hands off, mentioning drugs and alcoholism. Another favorite choice is branding such severe crimes as isolated incidents. 

Our chief minister, who handles the home ministry, has publicly admitted that many such criminals and terrorists have escaped from Kerala. Whenever someone speaks against such guest workers, they are termed ‘Sanghi’, and such incidents are used by the minorities, the communists, and the Congress to tarnish the Sangh Parivar.

When you ask, trite explanations arise: “Crimes involving Keralites happen in Maharashtra and Karnataka. Will we accept it if the local government ousts all Keralites?”. Where will these types of illogical justifications and shirking of responsibility lead us? When citizens demand NRC (National Register of Citizens) to identify and deport illegal immigrants, the communist-secular intellectuals howl in protest and talk of ‘human rights violation’. What about the human rights of law-abiding citizens like Manorama?

Will those who call such criminals ‘guest workers’ invite them and offer them their homes? How long can this continue? If things do not change soon and our secular state fails to crack down on such migrant criminals and punish them severely, we will increasingly find citizens of each state demanding an ILP (Inner Line Permit) type system currently enforced in north-eastern states like Mizoram, Nagaland etc to prevent settlement of outsiders and control their movement.