Tamil Nadu: She packed them lungis, hoping for a safe return – Times of India

Jeyaraj’s wife and Beniks’ mother Selvarani

CHENNAI: “Don’t ask me anything. You don’t need to know anything. Just go and stay with your mother (in Vellalanvilai in Tiruchendur).” Those were the last words of P Jeyaraj that his wife Selvarani heard when she asked him on the morning of June 20 if the police had beaten him. Jeyaraj’s voice had been feeble, tired and beaten, his wife recalled.
Friends of her son Beniks had called her on her mobile from Sathankulam government hospital where they were brought, battered and bloodied.
“When I spoke to my son, he kept saying, ‘Amma, naan…Amma…” Even when she packed eight lungis, three for her husband and five for her son, besides a shirt for Beniks, she never thought she would never see them again. Her son’s friends picked up the lungis from her house. But they never brought back the blood-soaked clothes later, afraid Selvarani would be terribly disturbed by the evidence of police brutality. They quietly disposed them in the hospital bin.
“I thought they will come back home on Monday or Tuesday (June 22, 23),” Selvarani told TOI. Later, she got back a bloodied bedsheet that was used to clean the car seat in which Jeyaraj and Beniks were transported to the Koilpatti sub jail, and her son’s blood-soaked shirt.
Selvarani last saw her son in the afternoon of June 19 when he came home for lunch from his mobile shop – APJ Mobiles. “My husband came home first. Had lunch of rice, dhal curry and an omelette and went to relieve Beniks,” said Selvarani. That was the last she saw her son. Jeyaraj came home at 7pm with paani poori, milk and masala kalar (a local soft drink) for his wife and son and left. He was to have his dinner later.
Later, Beniks’ friends called Selvarani and informed her that both of them had been taken to the police station. It was the most harrowing night for the 57-yearold soft-spoken woman, who got married to Jeyaraj in August 1985 after she completed her 8th standard.
“My husband believed we should not do anything wrong and not harm anyone. Even when he goes to have tea, he would buy several cups of tea for people,” said Selvarani, her voice breaking. That night, she set off with her brother-in-law to the police station that was a couple of kilometers away. But before she reached the station, she was persuaded to go home. She was told the station doors were locked from inside.
“Beniks was a child at heart. He had many friends, children among them. He loved to play cricket and kabbadi with them,” said Selvarani, who received several high-profile visitors in her home. She has deposed before the Koilpatti judicial magistrate and CBCID officials. “I don’t know what’s happening. Why did they kill my husband, son?” asked a distraught Selvarani responding to a query on the kind of punishment she sought for their ‘killers’. “I can only say such a fate should never befall another woman.”