CPI(M)’s Kannur district secretary P Jayarajan, one of the top-most leaders of the party in Kerala, on Monday moved the District and Sessions Court in Thalassery seeking anticipatory bail after the CBI probing the murder of RSS leader Manoj of Elanthodath asked him to appear before the investigating officials on Tuesday for questioning.
Though Jayarajan had maintained on Monday morning that he might appear before the CBI officials, he changed his position in the afternoon. According to sources close to him, Jayarajan’s decision, taken on the basis of advice from his lawyers, was not to appear before the investigators. The CBI is probing the alleged conspiracy behind Manoj’s murder.
Jayarajan’s position is that a decision on whether to appear before the CBI can be taken only in accordance with the court’s decision on his bail application. He said in the plea that he could be taken into custody and tortured if he appeared before the investigators. The court is expected to take up the bail plea on Tuesday morning.
According to sources, Jayarajan is reluctant to appear before the probe officers fearing that he could be listed as an accused in the case in the changed circumstances though the CBI has not made it clear so far whether it wants to do so. However, Jayarajan said in the bail plea that there was no evidence against him and that the CBI action was politically
motivated.
The CBI had said in the chargesheet in the Manoj murder case that all those arrested had close connections with Jayarajan and that it was he who had been protecting them. The agency had specifically said that the connection between first accused P Vikraman and the CPI(M) leader was so close that the former had been looking after the latter’s domestic affairs.
The CBI had quizzed Jayarajan for over seven hours at its Thiruvananthapuram office on June 2 last. When the agency wanted to question him for a second time, he refused to appear citing health reasons. Also, he approached the court for anticipatory bail but the plea was rejected on the basis of the CBI’s argument that he had not been named as an accused in the case.
The agency issued a notice to him asking him to appear before it for a third time last week. Though he was to appear on January 5, he sought a week’s time for appearing which the CBI granted citing health reasons once again. The notice asking him to appear for questioning on Tuesday was given to him on Sunday as the time he had asked for was over.
The CPI(M)’s allegation is that the CBI was persisting in its demand for Jayarajan’s appearance before it in the name of the Manoj murder case under pressure from the BJP and RSS. State CPI(M) secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan had last week alleged that the CBI’s action was part of a plot to keep top party leaders from campaigning in the upcoming Assembly election.
Manoj, Kannur district Sharirik Shikshan Pramukh of the RSS, was hacked to death by a Marxist killer gang on September 1, 2014 when he was proceeding from Kathiroor to Kannur in his Maruti Omni vehicle. The killers had dragged him out and hacked him to death after creating a terror scene by hurling country-made bombs at the vehicle.