Aseem Koraliyadan was a customs inspector at Coimbatore airport and, for over a decade before that, a footballer whose career took him well beyond Kerala. He lost his life when a vehicle struck him on a Coimbatore road and did not stop. His family sources say that it was a hit-and-run. The police version, as reported so far, does not contradict this. A driver has been detained, and journalists in Coimbatore have begun asking questions of their own about the circumstances of the accident. The case deserves more than the routine handling that hit and run cases in India too often receive.
The details of Aseem’s career are not in dispute. He played for Vasco Goa, Salgaocar, Mumbai FC, Mahindra United, East Bengal and Josco FC, appearing across nine seasons of the I-League as well as in the Federation Cup, the Durand Cup and the IFA Shield. He was the Governors Cup’s top scorer in 2006-2007, represented Kerala state’s junior team, and later played Santosh Trophy football for Maharashtra and, in 2013, for Tamil Nadu.
When he moved into customs work, colleagues describe an officer with a clean record, who had cleared his departmental examinations and was regarded as one of the more capable hands at a difficult posting.
It is worth stating plainly what that posting involved. Coimbatore’s airport has, in recent years, featured repeatedly in customs seizure reports: gold paste and foreign cigarettes intercepted off flights from the Gulf, hydroponic cannabis trafficked in from Bangkok, a multi crore gold smuggling case involving foreign couriers that is still before the courts. This is the environment in which Aseem worked. It does not, on its own, establish anything about how he died. But it is the context in which a hit and run involving a customs inspector ought to be examined, and it is reason enough for the investigation to be conducted with more than ordinary care.
There is also a wider point that bears making, one that goes beyond this single case. Aseem was Kerala’s, by birth, by upbringing, and by the pride Malappuram took in his career. But in the years that mattered most to his working life, it was Tamil Nadu he represented on the football field and Tamil Nadu he served as an officer of the Union government. He died on a Tamil Nadu road. That ought to place a particular obligation on the state’s institutions, not because his origin in Kerala is incidental, but because a state has a duty toward those who serve it, wherever they were born.
Tamil Nadu’s Chief Minister, Mr Vijay, built a public career, before he built a political one, playing characters who confronted precisely the kind of impunity this case now risks becoming an example of. That association carries no legal weight, and this piece does not suggest it should. But it does raise a fair expectation. Cases involving hit and run deaths in India have a well documented tendency to lose momentum once the initial coverage fades, particularly when the accused or those connected to the case have influence the victim’s family does not. Nothing here suggests that is happening in Aseem’s case. It is precisely to ensure that it does not that the investigation now needs to be visible, adequately resourced and allowed to run to a conclusion the public can see for itself.
What is being asked for is not extraordinary. It is a transparent inquiry into how Aseem Koraliyadan died, conducted by the book, reported on as it proceeds, and not permitted to quietly close without an accounting. If the facts, once established, show this to be exactly what it appears to be on the surface, that finding will carry more weight for having been arrived at properly.
Sustained public attention has, in other cases, been enough to keep an investigation from quietly stalling, and there is no reason this one should be an exception. That attention need not fade simply because the news cycle moves on.
Media will be watching how Tamil Nadu handles the death of a man who spent his working life in its service. So, in all likelihood, will Tamil Nadu.
