Haunted by guilt, Kerala man confesses to ‘accidentally killing’ harasser nearly four decades ago

For nearly four decades, Muhammadali lived with a ‘secret’ he could no longer bear.

On Friday (July 4, 2025), he walked into a police station at Vengara in Malappuram district in Kerala and calmly confessed to a crime he says he committed as a teenager in 1986 — the killing of a man whose name no one ever knew.

The incident, he told officers, took place when he was just 14.

Muhammadali had been working on the property of a man named Devassya in the quiet village of Koodaranji, which is under the Thiruvambady police station limits in Kozhikode district.

In self-defence

One day, he said, a man tried to harass him. In self-defence, he kicked the man, who fell into a nearby stream, the police said, revealing his confession.

Panicked, the teenager fled the scene. Two days later, he returned to find the man’s lifeless body still in the water. Fearing the worst, he stayed silent, according to Muhammadali’s account to the police.

At the time, the police treated the death as natural.

Locals then had said the man was known to have epilepsy, and no one came forward to identify the body. With no leads, the case quietly faded into the past.

But for Muhammadali, it never truly went away.

Now in his fifties, he told police the burden of guilt became too heavy to carry — especially after personal tragedies struck his own family.

His elder son died, and his younger son was seriously injured in an accident. It was then, he said, that he realised he had to come clean.

He informed the police that he could not sleep after the tragedy struck his family.

Investigators took his confession seriously. He led them back to the scene and showed them the spot where the body had once lain.

Murder case filed

Now, a police team led by Thiruvambady Station House Officer K. Prajeesh is combing through old files and newspaper reports in a bid to uncover the victim’s identity.

So far, the only surviving record is a short news report from December 5, 1986. It reads: “Koodaranji: Body of a young man found in a small stream behind Mission Hospital. Estimated age: 20.”

The police have now filed a murder case against Muhammadali, who is in judicial custody.