getting away

I don't ever eat in Saravana Bhavan. Nor do my daughter and her colleagues. It is a small sign of protest which will not affect this multi million company in any way. (It only gives us a perverse satisfaction).

I was the health columnist for the Indian Express  and my daughter covered "movies, persons and personalities" in  the same paper at the time of the murder.

We were in the office when an agitated Jeevajyothi ran into the Indian Express office on Mount Road, (torn clothes unkept hair) screaming "save me." She was followed by the newspaper's security guards and Rajagopal's henchmen. The editor threw out the security guards and henchmen and we all heard her story.

Rajagopal as obsessed with her. I started when she was sixteen years old. He called her "daughter" (her father worked in Saravana Bhavan) and gave her clothes and jewelry. He even paid for her wedding to her boyfriend.

After that he started harassing her. She did not reciprocate. He kidnapped them. Her husband disappeared. She was confined to the first floor of a house on the way to Ooty. She escaped through the window and came by taxi to the Indian Express offices. Hearing about her escape, the henchmen managed to track her to the outskirts of Chennai. Fortunately the taxi driver did not abandon her but suggested that "newspaper offices" were safer than the corrupt police. 

Her husband's headless body was found later. He had been strangled. In an attempt to hide his identity they decapitated him after that. The head was found eventually several kilometers away. Rajagopal's hands were clean. Even though the chief perpetuator was his employee, no one could prove he had ordered the kidnap and murder. Rajagopal claimed it was "misplaced loyalty." The employee actually went to jail for a couple of years. I don't think he cared. His family was luxuriously provided for in the interim.

Rajagopal actually hails from a village about 20 km out of Vellore. He has developed the village (roads drinking water school). He has a "Kalyana Mandapam" (marriage hall)  there which can be hired for marriages free of cost. Even the food is free. He also helps all the villagers financially and also by providing jobs. They never say a word against him. He has a loyal workforce that would lie steal and die for him