Human Rights Commission Member V. Geetha has taken a suo motu case of the incident and has directed the Chalakkudy Divisional Forest Officer to submit a detailed report on the alleged human rights violations suffered by Sujesh and his family.
Published Jun 22, 2025 | 8:00 AM ⚊ Updated Jun 22, 2025 | 8:00 AM
Sujesh
Synopsis: The Kerala Forest Department picked up Sujesh, a Chalakkudy resident, from his residence for selling venison. He spent 39 days in jail before a laboratory found that the confiscated meat was beef — something the man had been saying all along. The arrest and imprisonment have now ruined the man’s family.
Sujesh KS is young and looks healthy. He now needs sleeping pills even to catch forty winks.
Without those tablets, sleep evades him. Even if he drifts off to sleep, he hears the non-existent sound of incessant, hurried knocks on the door.
On 1 October 2024, Sujesh was jolted awake by such knocks, then real. He remained on the cot, his children, Shiva, 12, and Sana, 10, fast asleep by him on that cold morning at their house at Chalakkudy in Kerala’s Thrissur district.
He heard his mother answering the knocks at 5 am. Then came the unfamiliar male voice. “Call your son. We are forest officials. He needs to come with us.”
Sujesh was now wide awake. He gently pushed away the children hugging him in sleep and went to the door. ”Do you know Joby from Amballur?” the plainclothesmen at the door asked him. We caught him with wild meat. He mentioned your name. We need some details. He’s in our custody. Come immediately.”
The young man, a headload worker, was confused and hesitant. The visitors, now turning impatient, grabbed Sujesh’s 62-year-old father Suresh’s hand. “If you don’t come with us right now, we’ll take him.” The threat was clear for the hapless family.
The pre-dawn commotion has woken up the children. They looked in fear as the “visitors” took away their father. The children were too young to ask for a warrant, which the officials never produced.
On that morning, Kerala, the system that rules the state, betrayed one of its families—and ruined it.
Two days before Sujesh was taken away, the District Anti-Narcotic Special Action Force (DANSAF) team operating under the Chalakkudy DYSP had raided Joby’s house, suspecting that he had the meat of a sambar deer. Joby, a close friend of Sujesh, had kept the meat marinated in the refrigerator.
Believing that they had come across venison, the DANSAF team alerted the forest officials at Mupliyam, and Joby was taken into custody.
After picking up Sujesh, both men were taken to the Vasupuram Forest Office under Mupliyam Forest Station. One officer dropped the confiscated meat into hot water and ‘confirmed’ it was venison. Sujesh said he was subjected to physical abuse while being interrogated about alleged poaching.
”They kept beating me, asking where I had hunted the deer. I was crying, begging them to stop. But they didn’t,” Sujesh told South First after his release from prison.
Unable to withstand the torture, Sujesh said he finally signed a confession under duress. He was later produced before a magistrate and remanded to Irinjalakuda sub-jail under wildlife hunting charges, where bail wasn’t an option.
“I pleaded with them again and again, told them it was beef, not sambar meat,” Sujesh said. “But they didn’t listen.”
“For me, it was a shock. I had done nothing wrong. Jail was another traumatic experience,” he said.
Earlier, Sujesh had told the officials what he had done. “As a former butcher, whenever I got quality meat, especially beef, I used to share it with close friends like Joby.”
The first day in jail, Sujesh kept telling the prison authorities and fellow inmates that he was innocent. But they were helpless.
For two weeks, Sujesh had no way to speak to his family. When he was finally given a chance, he chose the 3–4 pm slot—just when his children would be returning home from school.
”Some of the officers were kind to me. They allowed me that time so I could hear my children’s voices.”
But that first call brought more heartbreak. ”My son Shiva told me that his friends at school asked him, ‘Why is your father in jail? Is he a criminal?’ I knew my children were being humiliated. And how could I blame the other kids? To them, only a thief ends up in jail. But I had no answers for my children,” his voice choked.
His father stopped stepping out of the house. Neighbours had begun mocking the family.
After 39 days in jail, Sujesh was granted bail. But by then, the damage was done. ”When I came home, my wife had emotionally withdrawn. Her family had also faced public shame. Eventually, she left me and the kids. A divorce notice followed,” he said.
Sujesh, a headload worker affiliated with the CITU, was removed from his job after the case.
”That’s when I understood—the real punishment begins after jail. Life doesn’t go back to what it was,” he said.
“The bail was conditional. I had to report to the forest office every Saturday between 9 am and 11 am to sign documents. But when I first went there with the bail order, a senior officer—now posted at the Pariyaram forest division—started threatening me again. He and other officials kept asking the same question over and over, ‘Where did you hunt the sambar deer?”’
Copy of the lab report.
I’m diabetic. I can’t afford to skip meals. But one Saturday, they made me wait the entire day—almost 6 to 7 hours—before letting me go. How could I possibly hold a job or look after my health like that? So I bought an autorickshaw with personal loans, just so I could work on my schedule. Now I drive nights to feed my family—because during the day, I never know when the forest officials might summon me,” he said.
Sujesh is now undergoing treatment for depression and takes sleeping pills. Even in his dreams, the memories of custodial torture haunt him.
After months of uncertainty, a ray of hope came last week. The test results from the Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology in Thiruvananthapuram confirmed what Sujesh had claimed all along—the seized meat was beef, not venison.
But it was too late. A man’s life had already been shattered.
Human Rights Commission Member V. Geetha has taken a suo motu case of the incident and has directed the Chalakkudy Divisional Forest Officer (DFO) to submit a detailed report on the alleged human rights violations suffered by Sujesh and his family.
”Forest officials should start treating people with at least the same dignity they show to animals,” Sujesh said, reflecting the deep trauma he continues to endure.
(Edited by Majnu Babu).
