Vigilante violence in Kerala

In India, vigilante groups (or "moral police" as they are also known) act to enforce a code of morality.[1][2] Some of India's laws, and some actions of police forces in India are also considered to be instances of moral policing. The targets of moral policing are any activity that vigilante groups, the government or police deem to be "immoral" and/or "against Indian culture".[3][4]

In February 2015, K.M.Parabhaakran of Cherpulasshery was killed by a group of vigilante youth for an alleged immoral activity. Around 15 men attacked Prabhakaran when he was found near the house of a woman. The culprits were not arrested as of 2017.[12]

• In June 2014, a female theatre artiste and her male colleague were detained in police custody for traveling together at night, which stirred protests against moral policing on social media. Hima Shankar and her friend Sreeram Rameshand were arrested because they were travelling in a two-wheeler late at night. They were not released from the police station even after the parents came and clarified the issue.[13]
• In July 2013, police arrested a couple from a beach in Alappuzha for suspected "immoral activity" as the woman was not wearing any accessories to suggest that she was married.[14]
• A month earlier, police were accused of asking money from young couples travelling on motor cycles threatening that they will inform the girl's father.[15]
• In June 2011, An IT professional, on her way to work at Kochi's IT park, was accosted by a group of drunken men because she was riding pillion on a male colleague's bike. The drunken men argued with her, and then abused and slapped her.[16] Several similar cases have been reported throughout Kerala.
• In April 2013, an artist from Kochi was harassed by two policewomen when she went for a stroll on Marine Drive with a male friend.[17]

• In 2016, National Institute of Technology Calicut, Kozhikode issued an order prohibiting girl students walking with boy students near the residential quarters of teachers and clerks because the families of the teachers objected to practice of falling in love before marriage.[18]
• In February 2013, in Vatakara, Kozhikode, a 19-year-old boy died after falling from his two-wheeler. He was trying to escape to group of people chasing him and an under-15 girl with him. The girl was also wounded and was admitted to a hospital.[19]
• On 23 October 2014, a restaurant in Kozhikode was attacked and vandalised. The attackers claimed that eatery was facilitating immoral activities.[20] The attack came after a local Malayalam-language TV channel broadcast a report claiming that some coffee shops and restaurants in Kozhikode had become centres of "immoral activities".[21]
• On 14 July 2015, a Madhyamam Daily journalist and her husband were attacked by a group at her office. They did not accept that they were married. The police arrived before the incident escalated. Later, a Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader was arrested for leading the attack.[22][23]

Mankada village in Malappuram district attracted the attention of national newspapers in 2016 when a 42-year-old man was beaten to death by his neighbors for visiting his girlfriend in the night.

A Hindu student of Zainab College was stabbed by Muslim vigilante for drinking fruit juice with his Muslim girlfriend during a birthday celebration.[24]

A young man was killed by vigilante people who mistook him for another young man who kept a girl friend. The vigilante people attacked him while his helmet was still on. When they removed the helmet, they understood the mistake. By the time, the young man had already died. his happened at Mundakkal in Kollam district of Kerala.[25]

In June 2012, a gang of men attacked and beat up a pregnant woman sitting alone in a bus shelter in Kannur. The woman's husband had asked her to rest while he went to a nearby ATM since she was heavily pregnant.[26] In 2012 December, a young man called P.V.AneeshKumar was attacked at Manna junction, Taliparamba by a group of men for the crime of talking with a girl of different community.[27]

In November 2011, Shaheed Bava of Kodiyathur near Calicut was killed by the locals for visiting a woman in the night. He was attacked with wooden pieces and other weapons and there were 51 wounds on his body. Only nine people were convicted for this murder. Most of the culprits escaped from any punishment.[28]

In 1997, a lawyer named Sabu Thomas from Kerala filed an obscenity case against the author Arundhati Roy, claiming that the 21st chapter of The God of Small Things contains obscene scenes.[29]