Kasaragod Collector K Inbasekar on Friday suspended Vellarikkundu Deputy Tahsildar A Pavithran for making "a misogynistic remark" and using a casteist slur against the Malayali nurse who died in the Air India crash.
The Collector also recommended to the state government that Pavithran be dismissed from service.

Pavithran, serving as a junior superintendent at the Vellarikkundu Taluk Office, was suspended for "comments about the deceased young woman that insulted womanhood" and for bringing "disrepute to the Revenue Department". 

The Collector noted in the suspension order that the taluk official deleted the post after facing widespread backlash on social media. The suspension order also stated that the action followed public demand for departmental proceedings against him. The Collector said he had suspended the same officer in September 2024 for making a casteist slur against Kanhangad MLA E Chandrasekhar over an organisational dispute in the CPI's employees’ union.

Pavithran's latest disparaging comments were directed at Ranjitha Gopakumaran Nair (42), a native of Koipuram panchayat in Pathanamthitta district. She was among the 242 people on board Air India’s Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, which took off from Ahmedabad airport for London but crashed within a minute on June 12.

In a Facebook comment, he wrote: "There was one Nair woman (among the dead). The government of Kerala gave her a job. She took leave and went abroad for... Got what she deserved."

A Facebook user named Noushad hit out at the official, asking: "Are you even human? No one on this earth has a permanent job..."

According to a panchayat member, Ranjitha had been working as a nurse in the UK for a year and came home on Sunday for a quick visit to oversee the construction of her house.

He said she had secured a job with the Kerala government's Directorate of Health Services and wanted to complete her job contract in the UK before returning to Kerala.

She is survived by her husband, Vineesh, two school-going children, Rithika and Induchoodan, and her mother, Thulasi.

The Congress’s Kerala Students’ Union (KSU) has written to the Collector and the District Police Chief B V Vijaya Bharath Reddy, urging them to initiate criminal proceedings against him. "He is a repeat offender. A suspension is not enough. The police should book him and initiate criminal proceedings against him. He was suspended earlier too, but he is back in the job doing the same thing," said Jawad Puthur, district president of KSU.

On September 12, 2024, Pavithran lashed out at the Kanhangad MLA in a Facebook post. He wrote: "E Chandrasekaran Nair… He is the worst revenue minister I have seen since I joined the service."

The MLA does not use 'Nair' in his name, though he belongs to the community. Pavithran wrote that he was the most senior member of the Joint Council of State Service Organisations, the CPI’s government employees’ union, but some N*** **** (casteist slur) were not ready to accept it. He accused the MLA of posting his nephews in key positions in the Joint Council, ignoring members from the Scheduled Caste communities.

He wrote that the Kasaragod District Joint Council is full of members from the MLA’s community.

Though the Deputy Tahsildar withdrew the post within hours and posted an apology the following day, Collector Inbasekar noted in the suspension order that Pavithran was a repeat offender and had tarnished the reputation of the Revenue Department with the post.