‘My uncle taught me to tie a bomb’: The innocent victims of Kannur’s bomb culture

On July 7, Thursday, Fazal Haq and his 24-year-old son Shaheedul brought home a ‘treasure’ they found amid a heap of scrap. The Assam natives’ find, however, ended up costing them their lives. What is believed to have been a locally made steel bomb soon blasted inside their rented home at Kaashimukku near Mattannur in Kerala’s Kannur, killing both the 52-year-old father and his son.

Whether they be accidental or by design, country-made crude bomb blasts are a never ending saga in Kannur, with these incidents of violence almost always perpetrated in the name of political vendetta. Interestingly, all major political parties in the state are known to use country bombs for local attacks in Kannur, with the root of such incidents often being traced down to the CPI(M) and the RSS, the dominant parties in the area, as well as the SDPI, PFI and Congress parties to a lesser extent. In case an accident occurs or somebody finds abandoned bombs, the political leaders simply blame the other party for it.

Not surprisingly, the district has the highest number of cases registered under the Explosive Substances Act in the state, with as many as 46 cases registered under this Act in the district in 2021, as per the Police Crime Records Bureau. As of May, the number of such cases registered this year in the district is 20. However, residents of rural Kannur swear that the actual numbers are much higher.

The terror of ‘party villages’

In Kannur’s party villages (areas where any one political party is highly influential), there are many youngsters who make crude bombs with the support of their local leaders. According to local residents, a large number of bomb-making accidents are reported from known party villages such as Panur, Koothuparamba, Iritty, Chockli, Ponnyam and Kizhoor among others. Most of these are party villages dominated by either the CPI(M) or the RSS.

These country bombs are made in small steel/plastic tumblers or in plastic sheets filled with ammonium and sulphate powder, along with aluminium, iron nails, broken glass etc. Sometimes, bombs are even made in ice cream balls. In November last year, a 12-year-old boy named Srivardan picked up an ice cream container in the shape of a ball, lying near to his playground at Narivayal. The ball, however, soon exploded in his hands, severely injuring him. The police later found a number of similar balls from the locality.

That was not the first time children were injured in such accidental bomb blasts. In the same year, two other kids suffered severe injuries in similar incidents. An 11-year-old boy, Devanand, from Koothuparamba in Kannur was also injured in the same manner in 2016, while he was visiting his aunt’s house, which had been unoccupied for a long time, with one of his relatives. “He was just removing a brick inside the house when the bomb blasted,” recalls Krishnan, who lives near the house in which Devanand was injured. He was admitted to the Kozhikode Medical College Hospital with serious injuries, he says.

Krishnan points out that there have been many cases where children got injured in bomb blasts while they were simply playing in the compound of their own house. “It is not just Devanand. Many people here in the villages of Kannur have been victims of these bombs. But they are scared to speak out because of the involvement of political parties in these incidents. Even the police are helpless,” he says.

Nitheesh (name changed), from rural Kannur, was a hardcore worker of the CPI(M), before he was badly injured while making bombs and ended up losing his arms. “It was my uncle who taught me how to tie a bomb. I was very young when I lost my arms in the accident,” he says, adding that party workers, from all parties, earlier used to mostly keep bombs they made in their own compounds. “When the number of accidents began to increase, they are now opting for abandoned or unoccupied houses and compounds. Sometimes they forget to take the bomb back and it just remains there, resulting in accidents. Despite this, these bombs are still widely made in many of Kannur’s villages,” he says.

Sreedharan from Pattikachal of Iritty lost his right leg in 2011, after a bomb was hurled at him while he was trying to help solve a dispute at his neighbour’s house. “One person in that family had left CPI(M) and joined BJP, so a fight was expected. I ran to that house along with some other neighbours because there were small children there. My intention was to help them. That was when a bomb was suddenly hurled at me. For a long time, I was under treatment at the Kozhikode Medical College hospital,” he says. With the help of a prosthesis, Sreedharan has been working hard all these years to earn a living. “The pain doesn't go away. Sometimes I have contemplated death,” he adds.

Vilasini, a resident of Koothuparamba, alleges that political parties in Kannur use those injured in bomb blasts as a tool to attack the opposing parties. “They conduct meetings with people with physical disabilities and blame the opposite party for everything. But every party does this in equal measure here. Country bombs are easily made and used in Kannur by every party in equal measure,” she says.

Women who work under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme have also met with such accidents many times while cleaning unoccupied lands, Vilasini points out. “These kinds of accidents get reported once, but nobody cares enough to follow up on them later. There are people here who have been living without hands, legs or eyes throughout their lives due to these bombs,” she says. She further alleges that there have been intentional efforts from political parties as well as the police to cover up these incidents. “Everybody has been conditioned to think that it is normal to find a country bomb in the villages of Kannur. No efforts are made to put a stop to this. Earlier, when we travel in trains, people from southern districts used to ask us if we had bombs at our houses. In fact, we might even have a few in our compounds. It will only be after an accident that we realise it,” she adds.

In February this year, 26-year-old Jishnu was killed in a crude bomb blast in Eachur village of Kannur. The blast was part of a wedding prank, for which Jishnu himself and his friends had arranged some crackers and bombs. The plan was to throw these bombs at the wedding procession. But the prank soon went horribly wrong, resulting in the death of Jishnu and severe injuries for three of his friends.

A senior police officer, who had worked in Kannur for a long period, says these bombs are made only for political parties. “Since these accidents mainly happen in party villages, they often go unreported. The police too have their limitations,” he says, adding that only the prominent political parties of these respective areas can put an end to this practice, because they are the last word there.

What political parties say

CPI(M) veteran P Jayarajan, however, feels that it is not right to brand Kannur as ‘criminal’. “Such crimes happen in many parts of the state. But we don’t brand those places on the basis of those crimes. It is not right to do that to Kannur also. If a crime is happening here, let the police investigate and find the accused,” he tells TNM.

The Communist leader himself has often been accused of orchestrating violence in Kannur, including being considered the mastermind behind the murder of Elanthottathil Manoj alias Kathiroor Manoj in 2014. Manoj, who was also an accused in a murder attempt against Jayarajan in 1999, was killed by a gang who hurled a bomb at the vehicle in which he was travelling, dragged him out, and hacked him to death. A CBI chargesheet filed in 2017 accuses Jayarajan of having provided all support to the prime accused in the case, Vikraman. Reports say that it was Jayarajan who provided all support for the treatment of Vikraman, who was also badly injured in bomb blast. Back in 2009, Jayarajan’s son, Ashish P Raj, was also arrested in connection with a country bomb explosion in Patyam.

According to BJP Kannur district President N Haridasan, there is no proper investigation into the source of these bombs. “If the police can trace down the sources of these explosive devices, more such incidents could be prevented. No matter which party is involved in the crime, they should be traced. But this aspect remains undetected in a majority of cases. This is the main reason such incidents have been taking place repeatedly,” he says. He also alleges that Kannur’s violent politics was a result of intolerance, after other parties and ideologies started to gain prominence in a previously CPI(M)-dominant region.

This is not to say that bomb violence in Kannur is limited to the Communist party. For instance, in 2008, a local court had convicted as many as 13 RSS and BJP activists in connection with the infamous 2000 Kannur bomb blast incident, which had left a three-member family including a six-year old girl seriously injured. The party workers had reportedly thrown a crude bomb at a house during the panchayat elections, assuming that some workers of the Congress party were hiding there. The girl and her brother were playing outside their house when the incident took place.