This week’s daylight bombing and hacking to death of an RSS-backed goon by rivals in Thiruvananthapuram, next to the state DGP’s official residence, was nothing new.

Neither was last fortnight’s case of a wife contracting a ‘quotation gang’ to do away with her husband or the series of goonda maimings, assaults and killings in the preceding weeks saturating Kerala newspapers.

Police say the gangs could run into “a few thousands”, with capital Thiruvananthapuram alone home to some 700 gangs. In the three years to 2004, when the menace began to peak, there were more than 39,000 cases of goonda attacks. Police are still processing figures for the last two years.

The Kerala goonda, meanwhile, has been going places, evolving, diversifying, innovating, even finding a tacit mainstream acceptance.

“The goonda is the legitimate quick-fix in Kerala now, for almost anything that the system complicates, and that list is growing. They are almost an accepted essential service in many areas,’’ observes Dr James Vadakkumchery, a criminologist with the state police for over three decades.

No longer is the goonda a semiliterate blunt instrument working for the neighbourhood assault or extortion outfit. Kerala has equally virulent political goons, corralled in legitimate jobs and put to use when required. Migrant labourers, farm hands, even college students, including those in professional courses, are known to moonlight for work that needs only threats. Then there are the so-called tie-wearing goondas, who work for, banks, loan sharks, mobile service providers.

“Most banks and financial institutions here have a regular column in account books for goonda expenses, called recovery expenses,” says Vadakkumchery. Such is the competition now that goonda service rates are plummeting — even in small towns like Changanassery or Kayamkulam. It costs banks and loan sharks a mere Rs 300 to repossess a vehicle, down from Rs 700 three years back.

But the competition also means bloody turf wars, and internecine fights too.

Then there are regulars serving Kerala’s many mafias. Additional DGP (Intelligence) Jacob Punnose was candid that the mafia now commanded an income base that even the government can’t match: “Our initial assessment was that the mafia command a turnover of about Rs 50,000 crore. But that now seems to have been a very conservative estimate. The mafia is in control of a big chunk of everything from land and real estate to sex, booze, hawala, financing and a lot more.”

Liquor is another area that the mafia controls. Officially, people from Kerala guzzle 8.3 litres per capita of liquor a year, the country’s highest, way ahead of people from Punjab. With former chief minister A K Antony banning the fiery local brew, arrack, a few years ago and the state owned Kerala Beverages Corporation Ltd taking over the so-called Indian Made Foreign Liquor vends, the consumption ought to reflect in KBCL’s turnover. It doesn’t. Says Punnose: “Such consumption should mean that the KBCL sells liquor worth at least four times more than it does. So guess who sells the rest.‘’

He implies that the liquor mafia could be controlling no less than three-fourths of the state’s booze trade, making several thousand crores a year. Police estimates are that the liquor mafia in the state makes at least Rs 10 to 15,000 crores a year, and employs “a few thousand’’ regular goons.

The prostitution racket, including organized girl running to service the Gulf markets, is another money spinner; after the land and real estate operations. Though state intelligence estimates peg the sex and land mafia’s turnover at about Rs 15,000 crore, police sources say this could really be “many times more.”

Criminologist Vadakkumchery says the biggest threat in Kerala could be what he calls the nexus crimes — ad hoc coalescing of the neta (leader), babu (bureaucrat), dalal (fixer) and dada (goon). “The pattern is now getting all the more established here,’’ he asserts.

Last year, Oommen Chandy’s Congress-led state Government pushed the Kerala Felonious Activities (Prevention) Ordinance 2005, an anti-goonda law, which immediately had rights activists crying havoc.

CM V S Achuthanandan, who took office in May this year simply let that lapse — he was one of its vocal critics earlier. Kerala is still to have a new anti-felon law that its home department is said to be working on.