THREE days after Kerala went to the polls, unidentified assailants waylaid V B Unnithan, Kollam-based senior reporter of the widely circulated Malayalam daily, Mathrubhumi, and assaulted him with iron rods.
Unnithan was heading home after work on April 16. The gang, which left him with multiple fractures in his legs, hands and ribs, screamed about a report he had filed. The report was on United Democratic Front candidate P K Ravi's assets -Unnithan had wrongly reported 40 grams of gold as 400.
Over a month after the assault which led to media protests and outrage in Ker ala, police today arrested the alleged mastermind, Crime Branch Deputy Superintendent M Santhosh Nair, for hiring a gang of hitmen to attack Unnithan.
Nair's arrest is not the only twist in the case.
The suspected head of the gang of hitmen who attacked Unnithan, �Happy� Rajesh, was found murdered two weeks after the assault. Police have not been able to solve his murder or link it to the assault on the journalist so far.
The reference to the UDF candidate�s assets was just a red herring to mislead investigators. The story for which Unnithan almost paid with his life involved Nair, a police officer who had worked in Kosovo as part of the UN peacekeeping mission.
The 43-year-old Nair had been upset with a couple of reports that Unnithan had filed, police said.
The first one, published in Mathrubhumi on October 11, 2009, was about a party at a government guest house in Kollam. The report had said police officers and �some women were present� and alcohol was served, suggesting �immoral activities.�
Four police officers, including Nair, were placed under suspension after the report. Investigating officers say the report was only partly correct: the only woman who was there was an officer�s wife who joined the party later with her husband. The reference to the �immoral activity� had created tension in Nair�s family.
Sources said Nair told them that his wife had attempted to commit suicide following the report that had named him. That prompted the officer to hire goons to attack the reporter.
Nair was also upset about another report by Unnithan on a vigilance probe on him. While investigators say there was a probe, the other details in the story were incorrect.
But Unnithan stands by both reports. �That the officers were suspended after the party shows my report was true. There was immense pressure on me not to give out the names of the officers involved in the party. But, as a reporter, I have to do that. My report was based on the inquiry of the Superintendent of Police, Kollam,� said Unnithan, who is undergoing treatment in a local hospital.
Police said they were looking into the role of other officers in the attack.
�We are also probing if the mysterious death of �Happy� Rajesh was related to the attack on the reporter,� said an officer.
Interestingly, Nair was part of the initial team that probed the attack. Later, he was moved out.
Investigations dragged for a month till May 12 when the police got a breakthrough with the arrest of three local goons. They were part of the gang that was hired to attack the reporter. They told the police that the gang leader was �Happy� Rajesh, a goon who was found murdered late last month.
Rajesh, an autorickshaw driver, was found dead two weeks after Unnithan was attacked. The postmortem report had revealed it was a murder. Now the police are probing if he was eliminated to cover up the conspiracy behind the attack on the journalist.
Based on the information provided by the gang members, police on Monday arrested businessman �Container� Suresh who hired the hitmen.
Santhosh, a container fleet owner with offices in Kochi and Dubai, hails from Kollam and is a friend of several local police officers.
Santhosh told police that he had hired the hitmen for Dy SP Santhosh Nair.