The abduction of his son and Sukma Collector Alex Paul Menon (31) has rendered A. Varadhas almost speechless. He cannot believe what has happened.
“I returned to Chennai from Sukma [in Chhattisgarh] only on Thursday after visiting my son and his family. I came to know about this [abduction] only around 4.45 p.m.,” Mr. Varadhas told The Hindu over the phone from Chennai on Saturday evening.
Mr. Varadhas, a retired primary school headmaster, lives in Palayamkottai, though his native place is Samathanapuram near Valliyoor. He had shifted from his birthplace to Palayamkottai with the objective of providing better education to his children — Alex and Juliet Ruby, a siddha doctor now settled in Mysore.
After completing his schooling at the Rose Mary Matriculation Higher Secondary School, Palayamkottai, in 1997, Mr. Alex Menon did his BE degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering at the RVS College of Engineering and Technology, Dindigul in 2001.
On becoming a civil servant in 2006, he was posted as Additional Collector of Jagdalpur in Chhattisgarh and then Additional Collector of Dhamtari in May 2010.
When the new district of Sukma was formed in Chhattisgarh's South Bastar region in January 2011, Mr. Alex Menon was made the first Collector.
‘Intelligent student'
“Since Alex, an intelligent student, lost his mother when he was in Plus Two, we showered love and affection on him,” recalls Y. Suryakumari Jayarani, his Tamil teacher at the Rose Mary Matriculation Higher Secondary School. She was terribly shocked on hearing his abduction by the Maoists.
Commenting on the recent abduction of two Italian tourists by the Maoists in Odhisha, Mr. Alex Menon observed on Facebook: ‘2 italian 2rists kidnapped by odisha maoists.. Their real faces are exposed every nuv n thn.'
