THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: G Vilasini, former principal of Government Training College here, has sent a legal notice to social critic and writer Sukumar Azhikode, seeking to withdraw his defamatory statement casting aspersions on her without naming her in a write-up in the Mathrubhumi weekly published on March 20 this year and tender a public apology. The notice was issued through Advocate G Sasidharan Chempazhanthiyil.
She told a news conference here on Monday that she was forced to sent the notice as Azhikode had depicted her as a “woman of loose morals unworthy for marriage” in the article.
Vilasini said Azhikode, taking advantage of his position as a teacher and consequential acquaintance, sent love letters proposing marriage when she was a BEd student in 1967. After sending her around 54 letters in a year, he paid a visit to her house in Anchal on January 1, 1968.
Accompanied by noted cultural personalities such as Ponjikkara Rafi, M K Sanu and R Prasannan, Azhikode made this visit to make a formal request to her parents to give her in marriage to him.
After fixing the approximate date and venue of marriage he returned only to give the shock of her life through a letter sent to her some three weeks later. He told her that his mother was against their marriage and therefore the marriage would not materialise.
Deeply moved by his decision to practise celibacy, she also decided to remain a spinster.
Braving all compulsions and emotional thunderstorms, she stuck to her decision for over 45 years. But after a long span of four decades, Azhikode devastated her through his article.
Excerpts from his autobiography published in the Mathrubhumi weekly disclosed that it was not his mother’s objection as the reason for backing out from the marriage. He had said in the article that he received an anonymous letter depicting her as a woman of loose morals.
“With a flavour of sarcasm, he also said that by backing out from the marriage he had escaped from a calamity and was consequently blessed with longevity,” she said.
His present action to pollute the good and respectful relation she had built up between herself and her countless old students by publication of libels and scandals on her character by concealing, distorting and disfiguring facts has left her with no option but to proceed against him and Mathrubhumi weekly editor K K Sreedharan Nair for claims for damages including a sum of Rs 50 lakh in case of failure to withdraw the statement and tender apology.
Vilasini said that she would utilise the sum for charity by offering financial assistance for the marriage of poor and helpless girls in the state
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