United in embarrassment

In the past week, trade union members were left on the wrong side of the law, twice.

July 10, 2014 10:52 am | Updated 10:52 am IST

Trade unions representing labourers in the city found themselves in rather embarrassing positions twice last week, and with arrests by the police making it quite worse. The first was when Murali, the Kesavadasapuram area convener of the CITU, was arrested on Sunday morning by the Medical College police on charges of demanding ‘nokkukooli’ from an IAS officer and for harassing the officer for over a week. The union’s top brass was quick to disown the accused, who is now in judicial custody.

The public image of the unions took a further beating on Sunday, when the names of AITUC leaders, including Vineeth alias Kochukuttan, another area convener from the city, figured in the murder of notorious goon Karali Anoop. The involvement of the union in this issue was, however, different, with personal enmities, stemming from an altercation between Anoop and a union member, allegedly leading to the murder. The ‘bonding’ between union members, says a police officer, got the trade unions involved in the Karali murder, with the workers deciding to give it back to Anoop as a group. Members of more than one union are among the accused.

Man-missing complaints are nothing new. But when a man goes missing with a load of cash, quite a few pairs of rabbit ears will go up at once. Nearly a week after Anil Kumar, a 47-year-old man from Kazhakuttam who made a living as a collection agent for various private finance and insurance firms, went missing with about Rs.8 lakh, the police are yet to trace him. The Kazhakuttam police doubt whether he indeed stole the cash, since he could have done it the day before he went missing, when he had around Rs.25 lakh with him. He was not able to deposit the Rs.8 lakh with the rest of the amount due to technical issues in the bank.

If his intention was not to steal the cash, where has he disappeared and whether there are other hands involved in his disappearance are the loose ends that the police are trying to put together.

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