The Kerala BJP, on Saturday, asked the State Government to ban Islamist organisation Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI), whose four activists were arrested for the brutal murder of RSS-ABVP worker Shyam Prasad (24) in Peravoor, Kannur on Friday evening. The BJP also demanded a probe into the alleged Islamic State (ISIS) angle of the murder, even as a shutdown in the district on Saturday, called by the BJP to protest the murder, passed off peacefully.
“The CPI(M)-led lDF Government in the State should ban the SDPI. If it is not prepared to do that, we will have to approach the Centre to see if this can be done through any of the Centre’s law,” State BJP president Kummanam Rajasekharan told the media in Kochi on Saturday. He also alleged that the arrested SDPI workers had ISIS connections.
The murder of Shyam Prasad once again proved that Kerala, especially Kannur district, had become a nerve-centre of ISIS operations, Kummanam said. Stating that the brutal murder had taken place in an area full of CPI(M)’s party villages, he alleged, “What Kannur is witnessing is terrorism supported by the CPI(M).”
The BJP’s contention and demands came in the context of reports that the SDPI, political wing of Popular Front of India (PFI), in Kannur, had become a manpower sourcing base for the ISIS. Almost all of the 30 persons from Kannur, who had allegedly joined the ISIS in Afghanistan and Syria in the past two years were said to be SDPI workers.
Top ABVP leadership alleged that Shyam Prasad’s murder was planned and executed by the Popular Front and the SDPI as per a conspiracy. “He had been actively campaigning against Islamist terror. He had also been campaigning against the Islamists’ love Jihad programme. That is why they targeted him,” top ABVP’s national secretary, O Nidheesh, told the media.
Shyam Prasad, son of Raveendran and Shaina of Alapparambu, Kannavam in Kannur district and a student of the Government Industrial Training Institute (ITI) in Peravoor, was hacked to death on Friday by a gang of masked men who had been following him in a car when he was returning home after the day’s classes on a motorcycle.
Amidst the attack, he tried to take refuge in a nearby house but the killers pursued him and hacked him in the head, neck and hands. The killers fled the scene after a group of MNREGA workers present there raised noise. Though the terribly wounded Shyam Prasad was rushed to a hospital in Thalassery, he succumbed to injuries on the way.
The police took the four SDPI workers –Muhammad (20) of Muzhukkunnu, Saleem (26) of Minikkel, Sameer (25) of Neerveli and Hashim (39) of Keezhalur – and the car they had used from Thalappuzha in Wayanad as they were allegedly trying to escape to Karnataka. Their arrest was recorded by the Peravoor police on Saturday morning.
Though investigations were on to find out whether more people were involved in the crime, police sources said that the possibility for this was scant. A Muslim youth had reportedly come under attack in the region recently and the police suspected that Shyam Prasad’s murder could have been an act of retaliation for this.
However, BJP, RSS and ABVP leaderships aired suspicions about the police’s conduct in the case. They complained that the police were not showing any interest in looking into the terror angle of the case. They said that the murder had been committed with the knowledge of top SDPI and PFI leaders and that there had been a conspiracy behind the crime.
Several Sangh leaders expected the NIA to take up the probe into the murder of Shyam Prasad because of the involvement of the SDPI, which is already under the agency’s scanner following the alleged large-scale recruitment of its cadres in Kannur to the ISIS. The ABVP has already sought an NIA probe into the incident.
Thousands of people including leaders of BJP, RSS and ABVP gathered at Kannavam to pay homage to the murdered RSS-ABVP activist as the body was brought there from the Medical College at Pariyaram, Kannur where the autopsy was held. Cremation took place at the land of Seva Mandiram at Kannavam on Saturday evening.