KOZHIKODE: Seventy two days after he went missing, truck driver Arjun’s body was recovered Wednesday from the Gangavali riverbed in Karnataka’s Uttara Kannada district.
His body was found inside the crushed cabin of the Bharat Benz truck which was pulled out of the river using the crane of a dredger at 3pm. Arjun, 30, hailing from Kannadikkal in Kozhikode, was ferrying timber from Belagavi when a landslide swept his truck into the river at Shirur on July 16.
Since then, for nearly two and a half months, Arjun’s family and millions in Kerala — in fact Malayalis far and wide—veered between hope and despair as inclement weather and a capricious river frustrated the search for the body of a smart and hardworking young man, his life cut short so cruelly and whose kin deserved at least one last glimpse of his mortal remains.
The long search and unprecedented public empathy onceagain underscored an ethos that Kerala has always prided in — that every single life matters, irrespective of community and creed, and that everyone sink their differences and come together when disaster strikes. Manaf, the owner of the truck Arjun drove and who embodied this ethos, camped in Shirur everyday that the se-arch was underway.
“I was not at all concerned about the truck. I had given word to his father that I will bring him. Initially I had hoped to take him back alive but could not do so. But at least now they have the remains to do the funeral rites,” he said.
The search for Arjun saw several twists and turnsWe have been able to show that every human life is valuable. Disasters may happen but the key in facing that is to stand united,” Manaf added, giving the lie to cynics who insinuated that the media, especially television, was turning the tragedy into a spectacle and complained that too much time and resources were being spent for a single person.
Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan Wednesday thanked his Karnataka counterpart Siddharamiah who, incidentally, was attending a programme in Nilambur when news of Arjun's body being found broke.
“I express deep gratitude for the efforts taken by Karnataka government in the rescue operations at Shirur,” Vijayan wrote in his letter. The intervention of AICC general secretary KC Venugopal and the influence he wielded in Karnataka government authorities proved to be crucial in continuation of the search.
Family members and neighbours remember Arjun as a hardworking man deeply connected to the family. Shouldering the responsibility of his six-member family after completing his pre-degree, Arjun hadtaken up various jobs, ranging from salesman at a cloth shop to painting work, before he took to driving heavy vehicles at the young age of 22.
Cutting across political differences, people’s representatives and government authorities exerted pressure on the Karnataka government, which responded positively to the requests and was open to conduct a thorough search in the river by mobilizing costly equipment including long boom excavator and dredger vessel. Multiple agencies including Navy and Army were also involved.
The search for Arjun saw several twists and turns — it first attained a sense of urgency after the family said on July 19 that Arjun's phone had rang a couple of times and the lorry owner said that the GPS location of the lorry was being shown at the landslide site, though it was later found to be inaccurate.People’s representatives, including Kozhikode MP M K Raghavan, Manjeshwaran MLA AKM Ashraf and many others had paid multiple visits to Shiroor and also to meet Karnataka chief minister to intensify the search.
Several teams of volunteers from Kerala had gone to Shiroor saying that they would help in conducting the search and marches were taken out in solidarity expressing solidarity and raising the demand for expediting the search for Arjun. Kerala government representatives, including PWD minister P A Mohammed Riyas, had visited Shiroor and the chief minister had written to Siddaramaiah requesting him to resume the search.
The family of Arjun had been unwavering, with brother-in-law Jithin staying at Shirur from July 17 onwards on all the days when the search was underway. He had said that he would not go back without getting to know what happened to Arjun. “How can I go back to them who have lost their son without something,” Jithin had said. The cooperative department has extended a helping hand to the family by providing a job to Arjun’s wife K Krishnapriya in a cooperative bank.
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