A day after several leftist leaders, including a CPI(M) Politburo member, harshly criticised Wednesday’s police attack on Mahija, mother of engineering student Jishnu Pranoy, who was found dead under mysterious circumstances in his college hostel three months back, Kerala’s CPI(M) leadership on Friday justified the action saying that the police were only trying to implement the party-led ruling lDF’s policy.
As the political storm caused by the incident and the Government’s negative approach to the protests against it showed no signs of subsiding, the State BJP on Friday asked Marxist Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, who had justified the police action the other day, to relinquish the Home portfolio he was holding for failing to ensure women’s safety in the State.
The CPI(M)’s State secretariat rejected the charge that the police had kicked Mahija and dragged her through the road near the DGP office gates in Thiruvananthapuram when she and her family members were there to meet the police chief to seek justice to her son who, according to the family, was murdered by the management of the self-financing college where he was a student.
A statement issued by the CPI(M) secretariat said the police had only tried to implement the lDF’s policy of standing with the victim always. It alleged that the tension that prevailed at the DGP office gates was not accidental but it was the result of a deliberate political bid to spread anti-Government feelings by cashing in on the grief of a mother who had lost her son.
The CPI(M) secretariat’s statement was in tune with the justification Pinarayi had offered to the police action at a by-election convention in Malappuram the other day. It also rejected the criticisms leveled against the police by Politbureau member MA Baby, former chief minister and veteran Marxist VS Achuthanandan and Kanam Rajendran, State secretary of the CPI.
Meanwhile, the indefinite hunger strike being held by Mahija, her brother KK Sreejith, husband Asokan and several relatives and friends in Thiruvananthapuram seeking the arrest of those responsible for the death of Jishnu and action against the police officials who attacked her and Sreejith at the DGP office gates entered the third day on Friday.
At their house in Valayam, Kozhikode, the protest fast undertaken by Mahija’s 15-year-old daughter Avishna also entered the third day and many relatives and local people joined her in the protest. After the police attack on her mother and uncle on Wednesday, Avishna had announced that she would hold hunger strike till her parents and others returned home from the State capital.
Mahija and Sreejith were at protest fast in the wards of Government Medical College Hospital in Thiruvananthapuram where they were admitted on Wednesday. The grieving mother said that she would take out a march to the DGP’s office on her discharge from the hospital and added that she would launch another stir on the spot if the police blocked her during the march.
Stunned by Mahija’s determination, the Government sent Cooperation Minister Kadakampally Surendran of the CPI(M) to hold reconciliatory talks with her but his effort failed. “We will continue the stir till our two demands are met: Take action against the policemen who attacked my sister and me and arrest those responsible for Jishnu’s death,” said Sreejith.
Unleashing scathing criticisms against the CPI(M) over the development, State BJP president Kummanam Rajasekharan said only the criminals in the CPI(M) were justifying the attack on Mahija while its leaders with democratic orientation had blasted the police. Since Pinarayi had failed to ensure women’s safety, he should give up Home portfolio, Kummanam said.