“Pinnottilla pinnottu, munnottu munnottu munnottu” (No question of going back, forward march).

The slogan was raised by a motley crowd of 100-odd CPM supporters who had gathered in front of Kannur Central Jail on Sunday evening to extend solidarity to over a dozen party workers who were sentenced to life imprisonment by a CBI court for the murder of two Youth Congress workers at Periya in Kasaragod district in February 2019.

The supporters were led by CPM strongman from Kannur and the party’s state committee member P. Jayarajan.

The CBI court on Friday sentenced 10 persons to double life imprisonment while four CPM leaders, including a former MLA, received five years’ rigorous imprisonment for the murder of the two Youth Congress workers.

The victims were returning home on a bike when they were waylaid and hacked to death by a group of people who were later identified asCPM workers.

The first group of 10 convicts was brought to Kannur jail from the Central Prison & Correctional Home in Viyyur, Thrissur. The second group of convicts, including a former MLA, was brought from Ernakulam.

Sunday’s reception came close on the heels of the release on parole of Kodi Suni, the main accused in the murder of CPM dissident T.P. Chandrasekharan. The CPM has justified Suni’s release.

After Sunday’s reception, CPM leaders, led by the party’s district secretary and local MLA, visited the houses of the convicts in Kasaragod and assured their relatives of full support.

“What is the message the party is giving to the people of Kerala? If it is not political murder why are they going to the houses and assuring them all help?” asked the father of one of the victims.

“This is not communism, this is an insult to the ideology,” said Joseph C. Mathew, a political commentator.

Jayarajan, who is a member of the jail advisory committee, later told reporters that “prisons were not new for communists”.

“No one should think they can intimidate us by putting us in jail,” he said.

Jayarajan also presented his book Kerala — Muslim Politics, Political Islam — to the convicts.

The CPM claims it has nothing to do with the double murder that took place days before the Lok Sabha elections in 2019. Then state CPM secretary, the late Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, had famously said at that time: “We are not that foolish to kill our rivals at the time of elections.”

The Left Front lost all but one of the 20 Lok Sabha seats in that election.