Veteran journalist and political commentator Sam Rajappa is no more. He breathed his last early Sunday morning (IST) at Canada where he had gone to be with his elder son and family for Christmas and New Year vacation.
Sam, who started his career with Free Press Journal and moved over to The Statesman as chief of New Delhi bureau was instrumental in launching India Today in 1975.
It was Sam who broke the report on the police highhandedness of the CPI-led UDF Government in Kerala during the emergency (1975-1977). He flashed the scoop about the killing of P Rajan , an engineering college student at Kozhikode despite the vehement denial of the report by the Home Minister K Karunakaran and the Kerala Police.
Sam got himself arrested by the Kozhikode Police and with the help of a senior police official managed to get remanded to the sub jail where some of the suspected Naxalites have been incarcerated. He met a colleague of Rajan, who was arrested along with the latter and he confided to Sam that Rajan died in police custody due to the third degree measures deployed by the cops of the Crime Branch.
Though the Kerala Government had denied the report, it was made to swallow its own words and owned up the fact that Rajan died in police custody. This led to the resignation of the then Chief Minister K Karunakaraan within a month of his swearing in.
His edit page articles remain a standing monument for his knowledge, articulation and erudition. According to close family sources, efforts were on to fly his mortal remains to India to be interred at Marthandam in Kanyakumari, Sam’s native village.