10,000 photos of corpses for police, including own mother's, scattered on railway tracks

KANNUR: An 'unknown' woman is lying on the tracks after being hit by a train. After taking a picture of the corpse for the police, Shuhaib went to his uncle's studio. After seeing the photo, his uncle said in a low voice, 'This is the mother who gave birth to you, who abandoned you when you were one year old.'

Kannur City native KK Shuhaib has been a 'police' cameraman for 39 years. He has photographed more than ten thousand corpses in his 54 years, but the picture of his mother, taken at the age of 21, still haunts him. That was on December 5, 1992.

Mustafa Chirackalkulathil's 'Saudi studio' was famous in Kannur. Shuhaib joined him to study photography after completing his 10th class exams in 1986. He accompanied the police on many tragic occasions and photographed them. Shuhaib was the one who photographed the lifeless bodies of ten children who passed in the Irikkur Peruman road accident.

Shuhaib, who had to live away from his father and mother, was raised by his uncle, Mustafa. The studio closed after his uncle died in 2016. Shuhaib now works from home. His wife is Khayrannisa. His children are Fattah, an accountant in a private firm, and Amina and Fida, graduate students.

Starting from an unrecorded image

The time when Shuhaib joined the studio as a trainee. The police came looking for his uncle to take a photo of a burnt body, but he was not in town. Shuhaib grabbed his camera. He went to the district hospital morgue and took the photo. When he developed the film, he realised that the image had not been captured. Dr. Gopalakrishna Pillai, a famous forensic surgeon, was the one who taught Shuhaib the science of capturing postmortem images. He has also worked with Dr. Sujith Sreenivasan, the late Dr. Shirley Vasu, etc. Shuhaib also worked for the PRD.

I initially lost heart in this job but was motivated by the friendly approach of the doctors and the police. Two years ago, I had to stay in the hospital for about two weeks. It was them who bore the entire expenses.
-K.K. Shuhaib