Violent birth-The evolution of ganglords

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Technopark, a trail blazer in the field of Information Technology (IT) and Information Technology Enabled Services( ITES) and  Kerala’s pride, has also unwittingly contributed to the  the grooming of Goondas. The area surrounding the  Technopark campus was earlier dotted with paddy fields. And the reclamation was carried out by a group of locals, majority of whom were into criminal activities. They carried out the reclamation and charged per load. And there were many teams led by Krishnakumar alias Appani Krishnakumar and  Suresh alias Karate Suresh. Suresh was later killed by another group. Although other ganglords like  Ambalamukku, Krishnakumar, Sabu, and Omprakash  undertook the  work for others, they managed to keep their involvement under wraps. “Many development activities of the state have had the involvement of gangsters in this way,” said a police officer.True, in the past, abkari businessmen and private financing firms did everything to groom Goondas for the smooth functioning of their businesses.It has been a few years since their roles have been replaced by real estate and sand mafias. “There was a time when land in many parts of the state  could not be sold without the consent of  the gang leaders. They fixed the price and threatened those who did not obey them. The entire deals were under their control and they  charged up to 30 per cent as commission for each deal” sources said.  And the unholy nexus between real estate mafia and Goondas existed in all the districts and it peaked at Kochi and Thrissur, the prime focus areas of the real estate mafia. Meanwhile, the attempted murder of a vernacular journalist, V B Unnithan in Kollam last year revealed the police-Goonda nexus. The crime branch probe into the case had found that the then crime branch DySP Santhosh Nair and some senior police officers had hired a quotation gang, with the help of businessman ‘container’ Santhosh, to kill the journalist, as some of his reports irked them. The quotation gangs in Kollam are also connected with the Palakkad-based sandalwood mafia, besides their ties with the sand and liquor mafias. The prime accused in the Unnithan case, Happy Rajesh was brutally murdered in a suspected inter-gang tussle, barely two weeks after the attack on Unnithan on April 16. According to senior police officials, the only benefit of the ban imposed on sand mining was  the emergence of a new mafia set up. “The only impact of prohibition of sand mining was that it nurtured a new kind of mafia set up. A group of Goondas, Politicians and police benefited from that. They fixed rate for each load of sand and charged commission as they like,” said a police officer. Not only that, it localised crimes and resulted in making crimes more rural in nature. “It is like prohibition of smoking. When sand mining was prohibited it followed all the evils of an illegal activity. An illegal activity needs a criminal nexus,” said an officer of the ADGP rank.” True that there are crimes related to sand mining and its sale but they are not concentrated much in the city but in rural areas,” said Ernakulam range IG Padmakumar.