Back-to-back murders of BJP and Social Democratic Party of India leaders in the coastal town of Alappuzha in south Kerala have rocked the state.
After suspected RSS-BJP workers hacked to death SDPI state secretary K.S. Shan around 8pm on Saturday, alleged SDPI workers murdered the state secretary of the BJP’s OBC Morcha, Ranjith Sreenivas, early on Sunday. A lawyer by profession, Sreenivas had been the BJP candidate from Alappuzha in last summer’s Assembly polls.
The killings have triggered protests by both sides across Kerala, and police have banned assemblies of five or more people in Alappuzha till Monday evening.
State BJP president K. Surendran said none from his party was involved in Shan’s murder.
Shan, a man in his 30s who ran a textiles shop, was riding a scooter around 8pm on Saturday in the Mannanchery area of Alappuzha when car-borne assailants knocked him down, hacked him with weapons and left him for dead.
Local people took him to a hospital in the city and then to one in neighbouring Kochi, where he died around midnight.
About 6.30am on Sunday, 12 people on six motorcycles arrived outside the home of Sreenivasan, 40, in the Vellakinar locality. Eight of them walked to his door while the others kept watch, police sources said.
When Sreenivasan answered the knock, he was hacked to death. Security cameras in the area have captured visuals of the assailants heading to his home and returning, all within 10 minutes.
The police have taken 50 men from both sides into custody. BJP workers Prasad and Kochukuttan from Mannanchery are prime suspects in Shan’s murder, sources said. No one has been arrested yet.
Police sources said Shan was killed apparently in retaliation for suspected SDPI workers hacking to death BJP worker Nandu in Vayalar, Alappuzha district, in February. It’s not clear whether Shan was a specific target or a soft target.
A Rightwing Muslim organisation, the SDPI is the political arm of the Popular Front of India. The BJP wants both banned.
Kerala police chief Anil Kant, asked whether better patrolling could have averted the second murder, said police patrols had been deployed across the district soon after the attack on Shan.
South zone inspector-general Harshita Attaluri denied any intelligence failure. “We picketed the whole night but this happened, unfortunately,” she told reporters.
Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan condemned both murders and said the police would catch the killers. “I am sure the people would help isolate these murderers and their hate campaigns,” he said in a Facebook post.
State BJP president Surendran told a news conference in Kozhikode: “No one has so far said that either the BJP or the RSS had any role in the killing (of Shan). Even the police haven’t said so.”
He added: “The PFI has been working in Kerala for quite some time with the sole objective of triggering communal riots. They are conducting arms training and terror activities.”
