The murder of a CPM worker in Kerala’s Kollam district has taken a political turn with the party accusing the Sangh parivar of plotting the incident to disturb peace in the state.
Manilal, 45, who worked as an aluminum fabricator and was an active member of the CPM in Munroe Island in Kollam, died of a single stab that is suspected to have pierced his heart.
Within hours of the incident that took place around 8.30pm on Sunday at a busy intersection in Munroe Island, police detained accused Ashokan and his accomplice Sathyan.
No arrests have been made till Monday evening as the investigation team was waiting for the post-mortem report.
Ashokan is a former cop with Delhi police and had returned to his native place a few months ago after taking voluntary retirement.
Kollam rural police superintendent K. Ilango told reporters on Monday that all angles were being probed. “We are looking at the personal and political angles,” he told reporters.
Manilal is the fifth CPM worker to be killed in just five months. The incident, which took place just 36 hours before the local council polls, has sent shockwaves across the state.
Local CPM sources said Manilal had just finished campaigning for the local body polls, stepped out of the Left Democratic Front’s election campaign office and was on his way home when an inebriated Ashokan arrived in an autorickshaw driven by Sathyan.
An argument ensued when Ashokan allegedly abused Manilal and the CPM. Manilal is suspected to have slapped Ashokan who then drew a knife and stabbed him in the chest.
While Ashokan and Sathyan fled the scene in the auto, party workers rushed a bleeding Manilal to a CPM-run co-operative hospital where he was declared dead.
CPM state secretariat member K.N. Balagopal, who was among the leaders who visited the spot, told a news channel on Monday that it was indeed a political killing.
“Before the last local council election (in 2015), Manilal had joined the BDJS (Bharat Dharma Jana Sena), but later returned to the CPM apparently because of that party’s links with the BJP. That could be a reason for this cold-blooded murder,” Balagopal said.
He said Ashokan was inducted into the BJP by state president K. Surendran at a public event in October.
But Kollam district BJP president B.B. Shrikumar told The Telegraph that Ashokan had nothing to do with the BJP or any of the Sangh parivar organisations.
“I am the district president and I would know if someone was admitted to our party,” he said.
“Manilal and Ashokan were friends and the murder followed a drunken brawl. The CPM is trying to leverage this incident to draw electoral benefits since they realised they would lose the Kollam local body,” Shrikumar said.
Acting secretary of the state CPM unit, A. Vijayaraghavan condemned the incident and blamed the BJP for the murder.
“This brutal murder was part of a Sangh parivar conspiracy to disturb peace in the state ahead of the local body polls,” Vijayaraghavan told reporters in Thrissur.
“Destroying peace by giving membership to criminals is the BJP’s larger agenda in Kerala,” the CPM leader said.
He reminded that Manilal was the fifth CPM worker to get killed at the hands of either Congress workers or RSS activists.
Congress worker and ward councillor Kavil Nisam was arrested in August over the murder of CPM worker Ziyad in Kayamkulam in Alappuzha district.
At least four Congress workers were charged with the twin murders of Mithilaj and Haq Mohammed in Venjaramoodu, Thiruvananthapuram, on August 30.
In a similar incident, a man linked to the Bajrang Dal was arrested for stabbing to death P.U. Sanoop, a CPM branch secretary in Thrissur in October.