Kannur: He couldn’t even blink on Sunday night as he replayed the harrowing moments in his mind—clinging to the bonnet of the car recklessly driven by ASI K. Santhosh Kumar, said Anil Kumar, a petrol pump employee. While speaking to Mathrubhumi, he said he thought he was about to die.

On Sunday, police driver ASI Santhosh Kumar tried to hit Anil Kumar as he attempted to stop the vehicle when the officer was fleeing the scene without paying for the fuel.

“I was staring at death as he swerved the car and applied brakes to throw me off from the bonnet of the car. As I looked at him struggling to cling on to the bonnet, I saw him laughing at me,” said Anil, who could only heave a sigh of relief when the car was driven straight to the Kannur town traffic police station. Though other police officers had rushed to help him, he couldn’t shrug off the shock suffered during the mad drive. “I couldn’t feel my limbs as I thought I was going to die,” he said.

It was around a year back that Anil Kumar had started his job at the petrol pump at Talap as he returned to Kannur from the Gulf after 24 years of hard labour. “I couldn’t save enough to support my family during my stay abroad,” he said. All his family members—mother, wife, and two children—also spent a difficult night on Sunday as they couldn't sleep following the terrorizing moments he had to undergo.

“I was receiving continuous calls from my friends, relatives, and well-wishers. Though all of them tried to console me, I just couldn’t come out of the shock which I suffered all of a sudden,” he said.

Santhosh was an accused in a case where a police vehicle rammed into a petrol pump at Caltex Junction, Kannur, after hitting barricades near the pump. He was driving the jeep during the incident on October 15, 2023. Although a department-level inquiry was conducted, it is alleged that the case was hushed up by limiting the action to issuing a memo only.