Good Samaritan writer tries to save life, gets arrested by police

Koyambedu is the busiest part of Chennai on a typical day. Home to wholesale and retail markets as well as the bus stand, it, however, was deserted on May 5. Traders Day had driven away shopkeepers and shoppers to their homes.

At the market, a man sauntered around. He was a regular there. Locals say he didn’t seem to have his wits about him and would roam around.

On the late morning of May 5, he fell down at the market. His body seemed to be overcome by seizures and he died on the spot.

Another man walked up to him. He was concerned that a life was in distress. Sporting a scraggy beard, his faced filled with fear and sorrow, he sat down next to the body.

Someone informed the police who came to the spot. They found a body and a man wearing crumpled clothes and looking “suspicious” standing next to the body was arrested by the police. The accused, however, was a writer well known in literary circles.

J Francis Kiruba, a Tamil poet, has written the lyrics for songs in films such as ‘Vennila Kabadi Kuzhu’ and ‘Azhagarsamiyin Kuthirai’. Having completed his schooling, he came into the limelight after the publication of his first poetry collection ‘Malligai Kizhamaigal’. Initially serialised in Ananda Vikatan magazine, it brought new colour to Tamil modern poetry. He has brought out six poetry collections and a novel, titled ‘Kanni’.

Kiruba won the ‘Sundara Ramasamy Award’ for poetry instituted by Neidhal, a literary organisation, in 2008. He was also honoured with the ‘Sujatha Award’, again for poetry, instituted by Uyirmai Publications, Chennai in 2017.

Friends say that the sensitive Francis Kiruba had been looking disturbed recently, and taken refuge in drinking. Like other literary figures, he found solace in solitude and wandering around the streets. He was on a poetic sojourn at Koyambedu when he went to help the man falling down. “No one came to his help. So I came forward. I pushed an iron rod in his hands. Holding that, his body started to get normal and his breath stopped,” said Kiruba to the police at the station.

The autopsy revealed that the man had died of heart attack. When Kiruba’s friends came to know of his arrest, his friends came to the police station and explained things to the police. CCTV camera footage proved that Kiruba had walked up to help the dying man. Kiruba was released on Monday evening.