Sheseena Sankar (33) committed suicide in her house in Mokeri, Thalasseri, Kannur district, Kerala. She was one of the students who happened to be in Standard 6 while Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha State Vice President K.T. Jayakrishnan Master was brutally hacked to death, on December 1, 1999, while teaching in the East Mokeri UP School. The unprecedented and inhuman murder in front of the students, during school time, is something unheard about in the entire world until then. All witnesses, 17 students, in the class underwent acute mental trauma and they had to undergo heavy counselling to overcome the psychiatric issues. Some of them managed to come back, some others still fight against the odds.
Sheseena suffered the worst sort of mental derailment. She never went even to the vicinity of the school after that rude shock. The very sight of school books made her panic. The very sound of ambulance shook her with fear. At last, she passed SSLC as a private student. And, she studied up to graduation, again as a private student, thanks to the affectionate pressure from the parents and workers of BJP and RSS. But, the depression and mental anguish pushed her to suicide yesterday, February 6, 2023.
As BJP leader Sandeep Vachaspathi rightly said, even though the CPM killers physically, legally and technically killed only one human being, Jayakarishnan Master, they have assassinated 18 people, that is, Master and 17 students. Sheseena’s suicide should not be construed as one of the several suicides taking place in the state, said, Vachaspathi.
Significantly, Acharampath Pradeep, the first accused in the Jayakrishnan murder case, was later elected as the Parents-Teachers Association (PTA) of the same school !
Some serious aspects have be to revisited against the backdrop of Sheseena’s suicide:-
None of the pro-CPM teachers of the school, colleagues of Jayakrishnan Master, did not show the human gesture of paying last homage to the slain colleague before his cremation.
After five years long investigations, the Additional District Sessions Court and later Kerala High Court sentenced five of the seven accused to death under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code. Out of seven, the sixth accused had been acquitted by the Sessions Judge. The Supreme Court acquitted all but one, that is aforementioned Pradeep. Later on he was released.
The Sessions Court Judge who delivered the verdict received several death threats after CPM cadres, led by district leaders, carried out protest marches against the court and the judge. One leader went to the extent of stating, during his protest speech, that the death was Jayakrishnan’s fate hence punishing the ‘comrades’ was not right.
Judge at last got a transfer to another part of the state and he still had to live and work with police escort.
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