Alex Paul was on Maoist hit list: Dad

CHENNAI: “My son was on the Maoists’ hit list,” asserted A Varadhas, father of Tamil Nadu cadre IAS officer Alex Paul Menon, who was abducted by the rebels in Chhattisgarh.Menon, the collector of Sukma district in Chhattisgarh, was kidnapped by Maoists on Saturday evening. Two of his security guards were gunned down.Varadhas, a retired school headmaster, who returned to Tamil Nadu on Thursday after spending almost a month with his son at Chhattisgarh, said that a senior IAS officer warned him not to venture out without adequate security as there were threats to abduct him. “The senior official in the rank of Commissioner informed my son to be very careful about 15 days back. In fact, he went out in different vehicles while moving around the district,” he told Express. Around 10 minutes before the kidnap, Menon had made a phone call to Varadhas enquiring about his health. The news of the abduction came as a bolt from blue for the elderly father who fighting a cardiac ailment. “It is very unfortunate that barely a couple of minutes after I had a phone conversation with him, he was abducted ,” he said. According to V R Venugopal, father-in-law of the kidnapped collector, his daughter Pushpa Baghyam called their Mogappair house in Chennai minutes after the abduction. “She was weeping without uttering a word. Then, she informed us about the abduction of Alex at gunpoint,” he recalled.  “We spent the past one month in Sukma but we preferred to stay indoors given the volatile atmosphere in that State,” he added. Hailing from Tirunelveli, Alex completed his higher secondary education at Rosemary School in Palayamkottai. After obtaining an engineering degree from a college in Dindigul, he moved to Chennai for pursuing Civil Services.Even though he was successful in clearing Indian Revenue Services (IRS) in 2005, his dream of becoming an IAS officer blossomed the following year. “Inspired by the contributions of former Defence Minister V K Krishna Menon, I christened my son after his name,” recalled Varadhas. The entire family remained glued to the television set to catch all developments of the case.