Kurup: Chapter 3

NOTE: This story is based on real-life incidents that took place in Kerala, and it’s a sequel to Kurup: Chapter 2. What really happened that night? Why were they in a situation to kill someone? Who is this Sukumaran Kurup? Why has this case turned into an important and famous mysterious case? Today we are going to decode the answer to all of these questions.

January 22, 1984

That night, Sukumaran Kurup didn’t die. It was Chacko. Through scientific research, DSP Haridas and the police team found that. After that, they started searching for Sukumaran Kurup in lots of places. They travelled to lots of places for days and nights in search of him.

Normally, in a planned murder, they will watch the victim closely, trap them, and kill them with previous vengeance. Or else, in a heated argument, murder will happen. But the killer didn’t know who he was going to kill. Chacko’s murder was forced to happen that night.

What I am saying is strange, right? But it is the truth. There is a famous dialogue in English called Wrong Place at the wrong time. The meaning of that is that you haven’t done anything wrong. But something wrong will happen to you. Unfortunately, it will happen to you only for being there. I don’t know how many of you believe this. But I trust this.

On the night of January 21, 1984, on the road of NH 47 in the Karuvatta area, two ambassador cars were searching for someone to kill. At that time, Chacko went there and caught it.

On May 26, 1946, Sukumaran Kurup was born into a middle-class family in Kerala’s Cheriyanad. First, this Sukumaran Kurup name itself is fake. His real name is P.K. Gopalakrishna Pillai. He has been socialising with everyone since childhood. Because of this character, there will be a huge friend circle wherever he goes.

Since his childhood, he has wished for everyone to respect him and to be the centre of attention. From this, the journey of Gopalakrishna Pillai to Sukumaran Kurup was different.

(His decision will stun us and make us wonder if a person will do something like this.)

After completing his schooling, Gopalakrishna Pillai joined the Maharashtra Indian Air Force as an airman. When he was in Mumbai, he met Sarasamma, who was a maid in his relative’s house. In a few days, they were in love. After that, they married against their family’s wishes. Their lives were going smoothly in Mumbai.

But in a few years, Gopalakrishnan started losing interest in the Indian Air Force. Because of that, he took leave and stayed at home for more than a month. The days went like this, and one day, he started receiving letters from the Indian Air Force. Like this continuously for two to three times, he received a letter from the Indian Air Force to come and join in the duty. But he didn’t wish to go and join them again. However, he can’t come out of the Indian Air Force suddenly. If the person steals any confidential matter, it is a big problem for the Indian Air Force. There is some process to relieve the duty.

But Gopalakrishna Pillai didn’t even wish to go through the process. During that time, he made a strange decision. He met a constable in Kerala, made a fake death certificate, and sent a letter to the Indian Air Force. Since the Indian Air Force got the death certificate, they officially registered that he died.

From that place, Gopalakrishna Pillai changed his name to Sukumaran Kurup and started living as Kurup. He created a fake passport in that name and went to Saudi Arabia with Sarasamma. He also got an executive job in the marine petroleum field, and Sarasamma got a nurse job there. There, they had two boy children. Both of them earned $80,000 per month. He thought his life was happy and peaceful. But everything was fine until that day.

In the 1980s, in Saudi Arabia, information spread that there was going to be a huge layoff. Hearing this, Kurup was a little frightened about the future for the first time. Even though both of them earned a lot, they didn’t make any savings.

Sukumaran Kurup has a good name in his native Kerala. He has huge respect in his friend’s circle. Naturally, he will spend a lot of money on every one. Due to that, everyone in his native country will respect him. But if he loses his job, he can’t pay for them. His house and the life he led without worrying will be stopped halfway. All this will turn into a shame for him.

Kurup started thinking of a solution for this. When he was thinking like that, he found a book. It was a German magazine, and he was inspired by the things he read. He thought of doing the same thing as he read. In fact, after reading this, his love for money started getting big. But in that, he chose the wrong path.

But you chose the right path. No matter how much you earn, you will not be satisfied with it. So it will be good to have an extra income with the monthly income. For that, you should do two things. First, you have to put some effort into your free time. Second, you must hear passive income ideas.

After reading the German magazine, Sukumaran Kurup was thinking for a while. Suddenly, he had a horrible plan. Immediately, Sukumaran Kurup took out an 8 lakh life insurance policy in his name, and he paid the premium up to certain months. A few months went by.

January 6, 1984

Kurup came to Kerala after a few days. When he came, he brought his family and friend Shahu with him. Sukumaran Kurup can’t do the thing alone. Since he wanted help from two to three people, he selected Shahu first, then Bhaskaran Pillai, and finally taxi driver Ponnappan.

Now Sukumaran Kurup started explaining everything to his three friends. At first hearing that, they were frightened and denied it. But after the desire that Sukumaran Kurup created in them, they were ready to do anything he said.

In the beginning, Sukumaran Kurup asked Bhaskaran Pillai for a dead body like his to make others believe that he had died. For that, he needs a body like his.

Bhaskaran Pillai is working in the hospital. In that hospital mortuary, a body that matches Sukumaran Kurup’s shape was found. To steal it and confirm that Sukumaran Kurup died, he planned to create an accident. He learned this in a German magazine.

For that, Bhaskaran Pillai, in his hospital and other hospitals, started searching for the body that matched Sukumaran Kurup. They were roaming like this for a few days.

At the same time, Kurup gave 8000 rupees and purchased a second-hand black Ambassador car in his name. After that, four of them started going everywhere. But they didn’t get bodies like Sukumaran Kurup anywhere, and the days passed like this. Their desire for money also started to grow. They thought that it was of no use to search for a dead body and came up with a horrible decision.

(That’s when we can see how money totally destroys humanity in people.)

Instead of searching for a dead body, four of them thought of finding a person like Sukumaran Kurup and killing him. They started searching for a living person like Sukumaran Kurup, and they caught a beggar on the roadside. Four of them caught him and killed him. But that person luckily saved himself and escaped from these four. Since they missed the person they had in hand, their eagerness started rising. These four human animals were roaming the roads day and night, looking for a person like Sukumaran Kurup, just like the animals in the forest waiting to hunt their prey. It was like this one day when all four of them in the NH-47 highway hotel started searching for someone after getting drunk.

Sukumaran Kurup was driving alone in Ponnappan’s ambassador car, KL Y 5959. When he was going to a place called Karuvatta, when he crossed the Hari Talkies theatre, he saw a man standing outside the theatre. Seeing a person the same as him, his eyes glowed with the satisfaction of finding the person he had searched for these many days. Immediately, he gave a signal to his friends who were coming in his car. They understood that without even thinking for a bit, they stopped the car in front of the person who was standing outside the theatre.

Bhaskaran Pillai asked, “Why are you standing there alone at this time?” He asked him to get inside the car and said, “They will drop him.”

He first hesitated. Since they all looked like his native people, he trusted them and got in that car. At that time, he didn’t know that the three of them were going to decide his fate, and it was his last horrible decision to get in that car. Without knowing anything, he got in the car and started talking friendly. He introduced himself.

“My name is Chacko. I live in this area.” The person who got in the car was Chacko. He is working in the Hari Talkies theatre, and that night he came and gave the film roll of a movie. When he was waiting to return home, Kurup and his friends saw Chacko.

Chacko said, “I got married last year. My wife Shanthamma is pregnant now.” Even after hearing all this without any mercy, Bhaskaran Pillai started executing his plan. The ethyl-mixed alcohol that he had in his hand, was poured into a glass and asked him to drink with it. He handed Chacko the alcohol glass. But Chacko denied it by saying that he doesn’t have this habit and that his wife doesn’t like it. At first, they started making it friendly. But later, they threatened and forced him. At one stage, Bhaskaran Pillai held Chacko’s hand and poured the alcohol into his mouth. After Chacko drank it, Bhaskaran Pillai and the taxi driver took a rope and surrounded it around his neck. They started strangling him without any mercy. In that case, Chacko’s neck bone was broken, and he died in the hands of those three inside the car.

After he died, they directly took the body to Bhaskaran Pillai’s house, and in the hut behind the house, they first removed all the clothes from Chacko’s body and put Sukumaran Kurup’s dress on him. Those four who changed all the clothes left Chacko’s underwear as it was. But finally, the unburnt part of that underwear showed the truth—that it was not Sukumaran Kurup. After they changed all his clothes, they burned Chacko’s face with petrol itself. After this, they kept the body in the car. Then they set up the accident like the car was hit by a tree. Bhaskaran Pillai poured 10 litres of petrol on that car and set it on fire.

When they set it on fire, the petrol spilt on Bhaskaran Pillai’s hand, and his hand also caught fire. In that pain, he throws the petrol can and matchbox that he had in his hand. Also, the gloves he had in his hand also burned. After they burned the car with the body, they escaped from there in another car.

After that, as they planned, the police thought that it was an accident and confirmed that Sukumaran Kurup died. This, when everything was going fine, suddenly their plan collapsed and everything got caught. Knowing this, Sukumaran Kurup left his family and friends and escaped from there.

The mastermind behind all this was Sukumaran Kurup. This was said by the taxi driver Ponnappan, Sukumaran Kurup’s friend Shahu, and Bhaskaran Pillai. All three of them confessed and gave the statement. Hearing this, the investigation team, the village people, and the whole of Kerala were shocked by it.

Haridas and his police team immediately started searching for Sukumaran Kurup. In between, Bhaskaran Pillai’s wife and Sukumaran Kurup’s wife were released. But the murder case was charged against Bhaskaran Pillai, Shahu, and taxi driver Ponnappan, and the trial started in court.

When the case was going to court on one side, they were searching for Sukumaran Kurup seriously. But the police couldn’t find Sukumaran Kurup anywhere. The days passed by, and four years after this, before Sukumaran Kurup’s house, which was half-built, some unknown person was staring at it for a long time. Like this, the police got information.

That person looked like a saint with a beard and a kaavi dress and was staring at it for a long time. The police who came there arrested him and started the investigation.

Sub-Inspector Alexander Jacob, who investigated him, asked a lot of questions continuously for four hours in the police station.

“He is not the wrong person. He is a saint, and nothing is suspicious of him.” After the investigation was over, Alexander confirmed it after getting his fingerprint. He released him from the police station. But even to clear the doubt, they sent his fingerprint to match it with Sukumaran Kurup. At that time, they won’t tell you the fingerprint result immediately. It will take at least three days to confirm the fingerprint.

When Sukumaran Kurup took the insurance policy, he gave his fingerprint, and Haridas’s police team matched it with the fingerprint taken from that saint. The result was not what they expected. Sukumaran Kurup, who they were searching for these many days, just three days before, came to the police station, stayed there for four hours, and answered all the questions asked by the police without panicking. After the police trusted him, he went from there. Alexander came to know that the saint who came was Sukumaran Kurup.

After the 1990s, a lot of people said that they saw Sukumaran Kurup in lots of places. Not only in Kerala. In Delhi, Bihar, Gujarat, Nepal, Kasi, and Rajasthan, the investigation team went directly to lots of places and searched there.

Adhithya, who investigated this case, used his own money and went to a lot of cities in India. He even went to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. But he couldn’t catch Sukumaran Kurup. When it was going like this on one side, without keeping this case on hold, the court gave a life sentence to Bhaskaran Pillai and taxi driver Ponnappan as the last judgment. But since Sukumaran Kurup’s friend Shahu turned approver, they kept him in jail for a few months and released him.

26 YEARS LATER

Since they couldn’t find Sukumaran Kurup until 1996, in that year, after 12 years, the police department officially closed the case. Since he was not found anywhere, a lot of people said that he might have died. But it was not the truth. To confirm that he was alive, an incident happened 26 years later.

In 2010, for Sukumaran Kurup’s son Punit Pillai, a marriage was held in the Sree Vallabha temple in Pathanamthitta district, Kerala. For that marriage, the entire police force went there directly and in disguise. The reason for that is that in that marriage invitation, in the place of the groom’s father’s name, it was written as Kurup@sukumaran pillai. But in front of his name, they didn’t add late. Sukumaran Kurup is alive after these many years, and it was revealed in that invitation. To catch him, a lot of police officers came there, as if he had come to his son’s wedding. However, they couldn’t find Sukumaran Kurup.

EPILOGUE

“Maybe Sukumaran Kurup might not have come to the wedding, or else he might have come to the wedding and escaped from there. A lot of movies were released based on his story. Since Dulqueer Salman’s recent movie, Kurup projected Sukumaran Kurup as a mass hero, Chacko’s wife Shanthamma and son Jithin filed a complaint against the movie. He said that it was sad that the killer who killed his father was shown as a hero and insisted not to do that.

Like how money is important for our lives, our mind peace, others' mind peace, and our family are more important than that. Even though our salary is less, the happy life we live with our family is heaven, according to me.

So Readers. What do you think about this story? Do you think that Sukumaran Kurup is alive in any part of the world? If Sukumaran Kurup is alive now, his age will be 77. And if you know about this most famous Kerala case already, hit like on this story and comment with your opinion about it. Or if you are hearing about this case for the first time, hit like on this story and leave your opinions.