ABSTRACT
This chapter examines judicial discourse and ethnography of a specific event of spectacle state violence in a village called Beemapalli in the year 2009 in which six Marakkayar Muslims were killed and several were injured after violence broke out between Marakkayar Muslims and Mukkuvar Christians. This event demonstrates how the state legitimises its violence by invoking the transformed identity of Marakkayar Muslims in Beemapalli from an ethnic enclave to a ghetto in the recent past that carries multiple forms of stigma due to the unique informal market developed in this locality after the overall pauperisation of Marakkayars in the region.
