CPI leader Annie Raja unleashed an attack, though indirect, on Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Wednesday. The national leader of the CPI, who is also the better half of party general secretary D Raja, while addressing the media at Thiruvananthapuram International Airport charged that Kerala Police has been infiltrated by RSS and that could be the reason behind the upswing in the number of attacks against women and custodial deaths in Kerala.
The home department is directly under the control of chief minister and the attack by the CPI leader is seen as an indirect way of telling that all was not well with the Kerala Government. The relation between the CPI(M) and the CPI too is not cordial following reports about the mass slaughtering of exquisite and rare trees from the forest land in the State. The Revenue and Forest departments were in charge of the CPI ministers during the previous tenure of the Pinarayi Vijayan led LDF Government.
Raja’s criticism of the Police department has come at a time when there has been an unprecedented increase in attacks and assaults of women. On Tuesday, 26-year-old Suneesha of Payannoor in Kannur district was found dead in her in-laws’ house. Though she had given a complaint to Police accusing her husbands and relations of torturing her, reports in vernacular media say that the police was indifferent to her pleas.
Suneesha’s parents Sukumaran and Vanaja alleged that they doubted homicide as the reason behind the death of their daughter as she had told them over phone that her life was under threat. On Tuesday 20-year-old Soorya Gayathri of Thiruvananthapuram was murdered by Arun (28), who has been arrested since then.
A Dalit woman too was assaulted by a civil police officer in Kollam district on Sunday. “All these point to the possibilities of RSS gangs having infiltrated into the State Police and they are derailing all laws dealing with women’s security in the State. These are all unpardonable mistakes from the police,” said Annie Raja, who usually focusses her attention on national and global issues.
The CPI leader, who has a mass following in Kerala, said the hike in the attacks on women and children come at a time when the Left Democratic Front Government was in power.