Truck carrying cardamom catches fire. 10 days later, driver dies after night of police questioning in Madurai

The footage investigators were examining on Friday was about what happened to the goods on the road from Theni to Madurai. (Representational image generated using AI)

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The truck caught fire before dawn on November 3, near a tank bund in Madurai district. It was carrying parcels and bags of cardamom from Theni. Ten days later, the driver, R Balakrishnan, went to a police station to answer questions about some of those bags. He spent the night there. By Saturday morning, he was dead.

Balakrishnan, a delivery driver from Devaram in Theni district, was found unconscious in a restroom at the Chekkanoorani police station at around 6 am on Saturday, the Madurai district police said. Officers took him to Government Rajaji Hospital in Madurai, where a doctor declared him dead on arrival. The police said they believed he had attempted to take his own life.

The district police suspended the station inspector, Muthu, and two constables. A judicial inquiry was ordered, and police officials said the investigation had been transferred to the Crime Branch-Criminal Investigation Department, or CB-CID. Footage from the station’s surveillance cameras has been preserved, officials said.

The fire had led to two complaints. The first came from the manager of the agent who had sent the cardamom. The manager suspected that some bags were missing and submitted a petition, prompting the Chekkanoorani police to summon Balakrishnan. The driver lodged his own complaint on Friday about the fire in his Eicher goods vehicle. The Valandur police registered a case that evening concerning the accidental fire.

Balakrishnan stayed at Chekkanoorani through the night. In its statement, the district police said he was there to “assist the Investigating Officer in verifying the CCTV footage related to the case.” The statement did not explain why that work continued overnight or whether he was free to leave. The complaint of theft gains significance as the small cardamom fetched nearly Rs 3,000 a kg at auction on Friday, according to Spices Board data.

His wife, Sudha, said her husband had initially reassured her that it was a fire case and that “there was no problem”. But, he also told her, she said, that about 10 people were there and that they wanted a case filed against him. She alleged that he had been pressured over the cardamom consignment.

Sudha said she kept calling until 2 am, when someone phoned and told her that her husband was the only one still being kept at the station. She said she asked why he alone had been made to stay and was told that some video footage had to be shown. She said the police did not inform her of what had happened to him and that she learned of it from his employer.

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A preliminary police account said Balakrishnan had gone to the restroom from the inspector’s room. The district police said officers found him unconscious there at around 6 am. Their account did not specify when he had last been seen before he went to the restroom. The police account of a suspected suicide attempt has yet to be independently established.

The footage investigators were examining on Friday was about what happened to the goods on the road from Theni to Madurai.

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Arun Janardhanan is an experienced and authoritative Tamil Nadu correspondent for The Indian Express... Read More