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| This photo was taken at Dorrigo National Park, New South Wales, Australia. The forests of this region predate the dinosaurs and were part of the same landmass from which the Indian subcontinent split several million years ago. |
The murder victim was Maria Kutty, an untrained nursing aide. She was 43. Married. Mother of five. Her body was found in the Maynatharuvi estate, near Ranni, Kerala, by a well. A Catholic priest's stole was found nearby. People had seen her walking with a priest the previous day. The news caught fire at once. After a week that priest was arrested.
This happened in June 1966. Even today this case stands as a troubling conundrum in Kerala's conscience.
This is the full picture: Maria Kutty was in an affair with the Catholic priest and the manager of the Saint Joseph Orphange's printing unit, Father Benedict Omangulam. He was 37 then. By then Maria Kutty had separated from her paralytic third husband. She had met Benedict when he was a pastor at Azhapuzha. Benedict had been financially supporting her.
The case alleged that Maria Kutty was pregnant from her relationship with Benedict and was compelling him to own up. The police claimed that Benedict had brought Maria Kutty to the Maynatharuvi estate to get her to abort; when she didn't relent, he attacked her causing her death, dragged the body to the well side and left it there. The doctor who was called for terminating her pregnancy was the prosecution's prime witness.
Benedict was arrested on 24 June 1966. By the end of the trial on 19 November 1966, the judge Kunjiraman Vaithiyar sentenced Benedict to death. The judge justified the sentence stating that the crime was committed by someone, a priest, whose position especially required him to set a high standard of conduct for the society.
That was the first time a catholic priest was being convicted for murder. It created a tectonic shock within Kerala's Christian community. Two movies based on this incident, made the same year, 'Madatharuvi' and 'Maynatharuvi Murder Case', imprinted the case in the public's mind.
But the next year, at the high court appeal, Benedict was acquitted. A.S.R. Chari, who appeared for the priest, argued that there was no evidence, beyond just a circumstantial one, linking the priest with the crime. The doctor's statement established nothing beyond the fact that he was called for the abortion and that there was a bitter argument between Benedict and Maria Kutty. Be it a priest or a common man, everyone's equal before law and no one should be expected to carry any additional burden of upholding it more. Benedict was thus released in April 1967.
All through the trial, Benedict firmly maintained that he was innocent. He didn't deny having the affair, but denied killing Maria Kutty. He said he knew the truth, but refused to discuss it an open courtroom, as he learnt it through a confession. He said he surrenders his fate to the Lord.
After his release, Benedict fully disappeared from the public eye. He spent his years in solitude in a catholic convent at Athirampuzha, mostly within the confines of his room. Kerala too forgot him slowly.
However, after 34 years, in the late 2000s, Kerala's Mangalam daily published a report. The doctor's sons K.K. Seriyan and K.K. Thomas, along with their 93-year old mother, met Father Benedict in his Athirampuzha convent and sought absolution. They admitted to it publicly. In the next few months, sometime in 2001, at the age of 71, Father Benedict passed away.
The doctor was indeed responsible for Maria Kutty's death. Maria Kutty was pregnant from her relationship with the Mynakutti estate owner. The owner had sought the doctor's help to abort, but Maria Kutty didn't relent. She had been intimidating both the estate owner and the Father to own up. She died during a tussle with the doctor. The doctor dragged her to the well and left Benedict's stole at the site to divert the police.
The doctor's wife learnt of the truth from the doctor in his drunken stupor and had confessed to Father Benedict long ago. Later, after the doctor's passing, she and her sons asked for his absolution as per the doctor's will. They released evidences corroborating the truth. In his later years, the doctor was pushed to remorse and deep sorrow after witnessing a series of losses in his family, leading him to put forth the request for absolution in his will.
There's a story of similar vein, written by Tolstoy. Called 'God sees the Truth, but Waits', the story is even taught as a children's moral lesson. Occasionally, we see such stories unfold in real life.
The question is this: is there something or someone as God? If it or that person exists, does it take responsibility for upholding justice?
Listen to the sounds in a jungle for a few minutes. You'll hear the unending march of death. Life is constantly hunting and feeding on life. Even small birds eat hundreds of tinier worms everyday. What are worms if not the young ones of insects? Snakes devour these birds' eggs and young chicks. Peacocks hunt those snakes. What justice prevails in the jungle? Where is mercy?
If such is the case, do we believe that there exists a God only for humans, establishing justice only for humans, from somewhere in the skies above?
The question of whether God always fulfills our idea of justice startles us everytime. With every ill-fated happening, we see humans crying out heartbroken: "God don't you have eyes? Do you not go by what is dharma?" In such cases that go beyond ideas of what's just, we see atheists crowing "Well, where's your God?". Believers too lament " Where's my God?".
Scriptures say that God is felt by everyone, yet not easily described (Tamil literature, Periya Puranam, 12th century CE). Can we, with our simplistic, day-to-day logic, explain the principles and morality of something that is hard to discern even for the most wise?
But we expect it to be so.
We expect this universe and that that is beyond it to be fit within the rationale and constructs of a life that we have established in this world.
When I was in Nithya Chaitanya Yati's Gita classes, he asked us a question: Why does Krishna ask us to leave all that we know as right (Sarva dharmath parithyajya). Why does he preach abandoning all kinds of dharma? Instead, shouldn't he be advocating for not standing by immorality?
The Guru then explained with a smile: "Because what's being talked here is complete surrender. Renouncing everything that we know as right and wrong, lawful and unlawful is absolute surrender."
It's very difficult to do so.
We think of this universe as something defineable by what we believe to be our moral rules and what we have been taught as the right. What we make of us, what we make of the world around us, is built on this belief. Good is bestowed on the Good, and the Bad gets punished by God - there are several hundred such beliefs. Day after day, we live believing hundreds and hundreds of such rules of righteousness that we ourselves have fashioned, and preach them to others.
These beliefs make up our ego. What could be more ignorantly arrogant than demanding that everything in this universe function in a manner that we can comprehend? Yet, time and again, we dictate terms to the Almighty. We give ultimatums to God, of the things it must do or must not, to be worthy of our worship: "God, if this doesn't happen I wouldn't ever pay my obeisance to you".
The laws of the universe rule us, in our ignorance we expect the universe to obey our rules.
Absolute surrender is knowing how miniscule our presence is in this universe. Earth is a tiny grain of sand in the vast expanse of the Milky Way galaxy. Realising that we are the tiniest of the tiniest of the tiniest speck , and giving ourselves fully to the immeasurable, immense forces is true surrender. The first step towards this surrender is to renounce our simplistic ideas of what is right, moral, good and bad.
A question was asked of Father Benedict a few days before he died: "Do you think God hasn't been just with you?" He replied, "I am a very small being. I don't ask God for mercy or justice. I give myself to Him absolutely. And I find my peace in that freedom that comes from that complete surrender."
(This is a translation of renowned Tamil author Jeyamohan's article published on May 21, 2026.)
