Causing escalation in the worries of the CPI(M) with regard to the brutal murder of Marxist rebel TP Chandrasekharan of Onchiyam in Kerala’s Kozhikode district, the Revolutionary Marxist Party (RMP), an outfit of CPI(M)-deserters, has decided to approach the Supreme Court seeking orders for a CBI probe into the “high-level” conspiracy behind the killing.
KK Rama, the slain rebel’s widow and leader of the RMP, said in Kozhikode on Monday that her party had decided to move the apex court for a CBI probe as the investigation by the Kerala Police, though effective in bringing to book the killers and the small players behind them, had not been able to bring out the “high-level” conspiracy.
Rama and the RMP believe that the plan to kill Chandrasekharan was formulated at the level of the top leadership of the Kerala CPI(M) though the police probe ended with the arrest of over a dozen middle and low-level Marxist leaders and several workers and fellow-travelers. The trial in the case is currently on in a special court in Kozhikode.
A former vociferous leader of the CPI(M), Chandrasekharan had left it in 2008 along with a large number of his loyalists due to ideological and policy differences with the leadership and floated the RMP. He was brutally hacked to death in his own village on the night of May 4 last year by a seven-member killer gang hired allegedly by the CPI(M).
“The police probe has been going on effectively so far but it somehow failed in looking into the angle of the larger conspiracy behind the murder. Those who have been arrested so far are all low-level leaders of the CPI(M) while a decision on an act like this could not be taken at the local level. So we need a CBI probe,” Rama told the media.
State Home Minister Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan of the Congress responded to reports on the RMP demand by saying that any decision on this could be taken only after examining the legal implications. He said no move to derail the current probe would be allowed, adding that the Government would examine if Rama’s complaint if she lodged one.
The RMP’s demand for a CBI probe into the murder has come at a time when a war is already on in the Congress party ruling the State over the effectiveness of the police investigation. A section of Congress leaders believes that some kind of an arrangement has been reached at between the party and the CPI(M) to spare some high-level Marxist leaders from the murder case.
Though the allegation has already been rejected by the State Congress leadership, not all are satisfied with it. Union Minister of State for Home Mullappally Ramachandran, the MP from the place where the crime took place, still holds that the police have been able to catch only the “small fish” while the “giant sharks” are still roaming free.