Since May 4, 2012, the day Marxist rebel TP Chandrasekharan of Onchiyam, Kozhikode was brutally murdered, the Kerala and central leaderships of the CPI(M) have been claiming that they had nothing to do with the killing but the Judiciary’s decision on Tuesday to send three of its prominent leaders to jail for life in the case has torn down that façade of innocence.
It has also brought into the open the refusal of the party leadership to stand by the word it itself had given. CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat had said that any partyman proved to have anything to do with the killing would not remain in the party. The party now seems to be unwilling to fulfil that word.
After the Special Additional Sessions Court in Eranhipalam, Kozhikode sentenced three of its middle-level leaders to life imprisonment for conspiracy that led to Chandrasekharan’s murder, the CPI(M) made it clear that there would be no organisational action against them immediately despite calls that reminded of the promise that Karat had made earlier.
The party, instead, reiterated that the three leaders convicted for conspiracy — especially its area committee member PK Kunhananthan of Panur, Kannur — were innocent and that it would provide them with all legal helps they needed for appealing against the Eranhipalam court verdict in the higher court.
Critics of the CPI(M), including the RMP Chandrasekharan had founded with his associates in 2008 after quitting the Marxist party, have been saying that the murder was committed by a killer gang the members of which were CPI(M) sympathisers as per instructions from its leadership which was intolerant towards his popularity and that of his party in Kozhikode district.
The arrest of at least two dozen CPI(M) leaders, including a State committee member and two district secretariat members, had given credence to this argument but the party went on saying that the arrests were part of a conspiracy hatched among the RMP, the Congress-led ruling UDF and the police it controlled to entrap leaders in order to malign the party.
When 52 Prosecution witnesses in the case, most of whom had some kind of association with the CPI(M), turned hostile during the trial, the Marxist leadership attributed it to the police’s alleged act of listing of false witnesses. However, those who knew the party’s power in Kannur said the witnesses were forced to turn hostile by the CPI(M) through threats and enticements.
Again, when the trial court acquitted 20 accused during the trial stage and the High Court stayed trial of ten accused including a CPI(M) State committee member and a district secretariat member, the party projected these developments as evidences of how the Congress-led Government’s police were framing cases against Marxists.
When the court on January 22 convicted 12 persons including three CPI(M) leaders, the party was rendered unable to convincingly claim innocence.