Kerala town plunged into darkness after one man’s fury sparks night of chaos
Kasaragod (Kerala): Residents of Kasaragod were settling in for a normal Friday evening when entire neighbourhoods suddenly plunged into darkness. Fans fell silent, televisions blinked out and confusion spread across the town. Behind the blackout was not a technical fault or a storm, but one man’s outrage.
The drama began with a Rs 22,000 electricity bill. The man, in his late twenties from Choori in Madhur panchayat, was used to high bills of around Rs 18,000 to Rs 20,000 every cycle, but this time he refused to pay. KSEB staff who contacted him allegedly received abusive WhatsApp messages. After repeated reminders, officials disconnected his electricity on Friday morning. That appeared to be his breaking point.
Around 4 pm, he showed up at the Nellikkunnu KSEB office, created a ruckus and left. What followed was a trail of destruction that left officials stunned. He allegedly got into his vehicle and began driving through Police Station Junction, Madhur Road, Choori, Ulliathadka, Chowki, NH 66 and into Kasaragod town, pulling out fuses from transformer after transformer. He targeted 30 transformers in total across two sections. Each had six to nine fuses, and he reportedly tore out every single one, threw them on the road and smashed them.
KSEB began receiving frantic outage calls from 5 pm. Yet the feeder lines and HT supply appeared normal, leaving engineers puzzled as vast pockets of the town went dark without any visible fault. Calls poured in from Kasaragod town, Madhur panchayat and densely populated areas such as Thalangara. Officials struggled to understand the cause until around 6.15 pm, when a resident reported seeing a man in a dark T shirt pulling out fuses from a transformer. That was the moment it all clicked and the police were alerted immediately.
By the time he was stopped and arrested on his way home, more than 6,000 homes had no electricity. Police said he appeared disturbed and sent him for a medical examination. KSEB teams rushed to each affected transformer and restored electricity by 8 pm.
“In my entire career, I have never seen anything like this,” assistant engineer Ganesh Kumar said, still shaken by the scale of the sabotage.
The man now faces charges for damaging public property, tampering with electrical installations without permission and endangering public safety.
(with inputs from agencies)
