Why Monday's murder of an RSS worker is unlikely to be the last political killing in Kannur
NB: This brutal act must be condemned by all democrats, no matter what their political beliefs. It is not possible to wage a struggle for preserving democratic norms against hateful politics of the Sangh by condoning murderous behaviour by self-styled revolutionaries. In 1999 the schoolteacher Jayakrishnan was murdered in front of his students; and in 2012 the dissident CPI (M) leader, TP Chandrashekharan was killed. These cases were traced to killer gangs linked to the CPI (M). It is equally true that such actions have been undertaken by the Sangh (see the ban order of February 4, 1948 in the aftermath of Gandhi's assassination; and Maoists. Violence by private armies and vigilante groups will destroy democracy and must be opposed, regardless of the ideological affiliations of such groups. DS
Monday's murder of RSS worker unlikely to be the last political killing in Kannur
The murder of a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh activist in Kannur district of poll-bound Kerala late on Monday seems the latest of several politically motivated killings that have plagued the district for over 30 years.
Monday's murder of RSS worker unlikely to be the last political killing in Kannur
The murder of a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh activist in Kannur district of poll-bound Kerala late on Monday seems the latest of several politically motivated killings that have plagued the district for over 30 years.
About 10 people attacked PV Sujith, 27, at his home on
Monday night. His aged parents and brother suffered injuries when they tried to
stop the assault. Sujith, who was hacked with a sword, died before reaching
hospital. The police has taken seven persons, alleged to be Communist Party of
India (Marxist) workers, into custody.
The Bharatiya Janata Party blamed the CPI(M) for the
assault. Its Kannur district president, P Sathyaprakash, said the “unprovoked”
attack was part of the violence the CPI(M) planned following the arrest of its
district secretary P Jayarajan in the 2014 Kathiroor Manoj murder case. BJP
state president Kummanam Rajashekharan said that Sujith was a victim of
political violence, adding that the incident indicated that the CPI(M) was
unwilling to abandon violence. “When the CPI(M) leadership rejected our
initiative for talks to end the spectre of violence in Kannur, I knew they did
not want peace to prevail,” he said. “The murder of our worker on Monday has
proved my fears.”
The CPI(M) state secretary, Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, however,
denied that politics was behind the RSS functionary’s murder. It was the result
of a local dispute over the alleged harassment of a girl, he said. His
colleague in Kannur, EP Jayarajan, accused the BJP of trying to attribute
political motives to the crime for political gain.
Muscle power rules
Though it is unclear whether political rivalry was to blame
for the crime, killings in Kannur tend to get political overtones more often than
not because politics in the district – the cradle of the Communist movement in
Kerala – is driven by muscle power across political parties. The emergence of
the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in the 1980s, and its attempts to penetrate the
CPI(M)’s pocket boroughs or party villages, made brutal murders a routine
affair in the district. Though the CPI(M) resisted the Hindutva outfit’s
attempts to make inroads into its villages, it could not stop the RSS from
creating new ones.
Both outfits now have several villages in the district where
they enforce their writ. Dissenters are physically manhandled or killed. About
200 people have been killed in the crossfire between the two groups in the last
three decades. The parties protect the killers and, if they are convicted,
their families too.
A senior police officer in north Kerala said that the police
seldom get to nab the actual culprits in most cases as the political parties
themselves produce the accused and witnesses. Most cases, therefore, fail
judicial scrutiny. It is common to see mass acquittals in such cases. Just on
Tuesday, the Kerala High Court acquitted 26 CPI(M) activists who were sentenced
to life imprisonment by trial courts in two political murder cases. The
prosecution had apparently failed to prove their direct involvement in the
crimes. Then, in the sensational Jayakrishnan Master murder case, the Supreme
Court acquitted four of the five accused who had been sentenced to death by a
lower court, and commuted the death sentence of the fifth accused to life term.
Jayakrishnan was lynched to death inside a classroom as his students watched in
December 1999.
The police officer, who did not want to be identified, said
there were several cases where the police has blindly believed the “accused”
and “witnesses” produced by parties responsible for the crime. He said that
police officers, who defy the political parties, are intimidated and even
attacked by musclemen. The state director general of prosecution, T Asif Ali,
said the police had decided not to charge the CPI(M)’s Kannur district
secretary P Jayarajan with conspiracy in the 2012 Shukoor murder case as his
arrest that year had led to widespread violence across the district.
But Jayarajan recently saw two setbacks in court. On
February 8, the High Court ordered a CBI probe into the Shukoor murder saying
that the court can’t allow “self-declared kings to control the law and order
system.” And on February 11, the high court rejected his petition for
anticipatory bail in the Kathiroor murder case. Jayarajan surrendered before
court a day later and was remanded in judicial custody. The BJP believes that
the murder of PV Sujith was a reaction to his arrest.
Serious accusations
Apart from Jayarajan, several other senior CPI(M) leaders
are believed to have a hand in several politically motivated murders that the
state police has failed to investigate. This includes the 2012 murder of TP
Chandrashekharan, a Marxist rebel, who questioned the ideological deviations in
the party. The police stopped its investigation in the case after filing a
chargesheet against those directly involved in the crime.
Three CPI(M) leaders
are among eight people sentenced to life imprisonment in connection with the
murder. Chandrashekharan’s wife believes that the murder – the victim was
hacked to death – was conceived at the highest level in the party, and is
continuing a lonely battle for a CBI probe to bring them to book. If she
succeeds, this will be the fourth murder case where the CBI would have been
brought in to investigate the conspiracy angle.
Kerala’s Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala believes that
attempts to identify and track those who order killings, and not just the
killers themselves, will help bring an end to the political violence in Kannur. Whatever the case, the Congress is gearing up to make
political violence a major poll issue in the forthcoming Assembly elections due
in April or May. Jayarajan’s recent arrest , and Sujith's murder has given a
breather to the ruling United Democratic Front, which is grappling with
corruption cases against seven-odd ministers. The party believes that the
government can use the murder and arrest to put the CPI(M) and the BJP on the
defensive in the run up to the polls.
http://scroll.in/article/803697/why-mondays-murder-of-an-rss-worker-is-unlikely-to-be-the-last-political-killing-in-kannurAlso see:
A Hard Rain Falling (on private armies and political violence-EPW, July 2012
The law of killing - a brief history of Indian fascism
RSS men attacked us, police forced us to forego legal action, say Sonepat Dalits
