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Woman victim of Left leader's harassment dreads poll outcome

Vineetha Kottai, a 49-year-old widowed mother of two boys, is worried. To most people, the election this time is a battle far removed from their lives, a distant roll of drums that will usher in one politician or the other.

  • By Neena Gopal, Foreign Editor
  • Published: 00:00 April 23, 2006
  • Gulf News

Meppayyur: Vineetha Kottai, a 49-year-old widowed mother of two boys, is worried. To most people, the election this time is a battle far removed from their lives, a distant roll of drums that will usher in one politician or the other.

But as the din of electioneering grows ever closer by the day, Vineetha is waiting for Meppayyur's date with the polls. It's only then she will know whether to guard against the return of her nemesis, E.C. Balan, and relive the primeval battle of "good against evil" fighting the bully who allegedly beat, starved and humiliated her and her boys in the name of Marxism.

"What's the worst he can do? Get the police back on his side, bring back the thugs, kill me? So let him," says the frail woman who single-handedly took on Balan who, in turn brought the full might of the Communist Party of India- Marxist against her. She won.

But the façade of courage could crumble in case of a Left victory, the relative peace of the last one year a dream as the return of the Marxists becomes synonymous with a return to terror.

"He's done it before, thrown kerosene at me to make it look like I would have committed suicide. I escaped." Barely. "He's beaten me, thrashed my sons, stopped workers from working on my property, left me to starve. But I am still here," she said, voice ringing out in defiance in her old style home, eating the very coconuts Balan had stopped her from harvesting off her land, in a bid to starve her out of her home and land.

"The only friends I had were the birds and the snakes, nobody came here, no one would speak to me or my children for 10 long years."

For all that time as her neighbours looked the other way, the woman became invisible to everyone, a pariah in her own village.

Egged on by Balan, and with the blessing of late Marxist leader C.P. Kanaran, the Pathirippatta chapter of the CPM imposed a 'blockade', the term used by the Communists when they stop workers from tilling someone's land until they follow the party's diktat. In this case the diktat was for Vineetha to leave her father's home and go back to Mumbai from where she had come.

"That was impossible. I had no home to go to, no husband, no brothers or sisters. Where could I go? This was home. It simply wasn't an option."

On the night when he tried to fake her suicide, a local police officer with whom she filed a complaint did not seal her home when she fled after spying Balan and two others approach, carrying a can of kerosene and a flaming torch through a slit in a half closed doorway.

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