1987. As a Pre-Degree student at Arts College, Thiruvananthapuram, I come face to face in the campus with someone the likes of whom I had not seen before – a hardened criminal. He is a young man in shirt and dhoti, escorted by two policemen. He walks towards a classroom to sit for a public exam.
His name is Reni George. He had been the subject of a movie.
Flashback 1980. A cold October morning in Meenthalakkara, Thiruvalla. Part-time maid Gowri finds her elderly employers, K.C. George, 63, and wife Rachel, 56, dead in their home ‘Karikkanvilla’. The childless couple who had made money overseas was leading a retired life. A vital clue at the site was the footmarks of foreign shoes. It came to be known as the Karikkanvilla murder.
Cops led by a young ASP Siby Mathews IPS nabbed the murderers within a few days from Chennai. A 27-year-old relative of the couple called Reni George, who they used to refer to the maid as ‘Madrasile Mon’ (The son in Madras) and his three accomplices, Hassan Gulam Mohammad of Mauritius, Gunasekara of Malaysia and Daniel Kibero of Kenya, were the culprits. They were drug addicts in their twenties and committed the crime to rob the couple of their money and gold to fund their drug purchases. They were tried and sentenced to life in prison.
Filmmaker J. Sasikumar made a movie on the crime called മദ്രാസിലെ മോൻ (Madrasile Mon) in 1982. Raveendran played Reni. Other actors were Mohanlal, Ummar, Sheela, Ravikumar, and Thampi Kannanthanam.
Reni was lodged in Poojappura jail where he spent fourteen years and nine months before being released in April 1995. Even in jail, he continued his destructive life of drugs and alcohol. But a certain transformation came sometime midway through. He discovered the power of God. He also fell in love, with a nurse called Teena whom he was to later marry and sire a daughter with. Out of jail, he immersed himself in charity work and also became a Christian evangelist. He started many NGOs like one in Bangalore for taking care of prisoners’ children.
In his memoirs titled Nirbhayam (Without Fear), Siby Mathews, who was to retire as the state’s police chief, concludes the chapter on the Karikkanvilla case with the words, ‘I still have a deep friendship with Reni. The transformation brought about in Reni’s life is far bigger for me than any amount of praise received from my superiors for solving the Karikkanvilla case.’
You may read my review of the book in online Manorama here:
The transformation of Reni George was cited by Justice K.T. Thomas in his advocacy against capital punishment. Reni was given CNN-IBN’s ‘Real Heroes’ Award in 2008.
(2016)
Biju Parameswaran 
[…] Officerude Anubhavakkurippukal published last week by V. S. Achuthanandan, the veteran cop lauds the reformation that came about in the life of Reni George and his subsequent friendship with him. He concludes the chapter on the Karikkanvilla case by observing that the transformation in […]