Kerala’s CPI(M)-led lDF Government on Monday informed the High Court that there was no need of a CBI probe into the political murders — of RSS-BJP workers in Kannur district and elsewhere in the State  — that had taken place in the State since it assumed office. The Central agency had earlier aired its readiness to probe these killings if the court directed it to do so.

The Home Department explained that the State police had been efficiently and seriously probing the political murders into which CBI probe had been sought by a Kannur-based social organisation. In an affidavit filed before the court, it pointed out that the Supreme Court itself had once aired the suspicion whether the CBI was a caged parrot.

The affidavit was submitted in response to a directive from the court to furnish explanation on a PIl filed by the Gopalan Adiyodi Vakil Memorial Trust of Thalassery in Kannur seeking orders for CBI probe into seven cases relating to eight political murders that had taken place in the State since the lDF came to power. CPI(M) activists were said to be behind all these incidents.

The Government said in an affidavit that there was no need for the CBI to probe these murders as the State police had already filed chargesheets in five of the seven cited cases and that probe was progressing in the remaining cases. The court posted the case to November 13 after the petitioner sought time for responding to the Government’s affidavit.

When the petition was first taken up on October 17, the Government had told the court that political murders were not taking place frequently in Kannur and elsewhere as alleged by the petitioner. Even the families of those killed in such incidents had not so far made any complaint against the police probe, it said.

According to the Government, peace talks were being held in areas hit by political conflict – between the CPI(M) and the RSS-BJP – and follow-up actions are being taken consistently. Efforts are going on in the State to depict even cases of murders related to family feuds as incidents of political violence, it says.

Petitioner RK Premdas, secretary of the trust, alleged that all the murders cited in the plea were pre-planned and that there were high-level political conspiracies behind each of them. He said the actual culprits were not being brought before law and that there had always been attempts to protect them as they belonged to a particular ruling party, the CPI(M).

The cases in which the petitioner wanted CBI probe pertained to the political murders taken place in the State between July 12, 2016 and July 29, 2017. local BMS leader CK Ramachandran was murdered in Payyannur, in Kannur on July 12, 2016 and local RSS leader Kallampally Rajesh was hacked to death at Sreekaryan, Thiruvananthapuram on July 29 last.

The other RSS-BJP workers killed allegedly by CPI(M) men as mentioned by the petitioner in Kannur were C Ramith in Pinarayi – native village of Marxist Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan – on October 12, 2016, Santhoshkumar in Dharmadom on January 17, 2017 and Biju on May 12 last in Payyannur.

The other cases in which probe had been sought pertained to the murder of Vimala Devi and her relative Radhakrishnan at Kanjikode in Palakkad district on December 28 last year and Raveendran Pillai of Kadakkal in Kollam district on February 2, 2017. The petitioner said that there had always been attempts to derail investigation into all these murders.