The Kerala CPI(M) on Tuesday chose to go on the offensive to save its top leadership from the charge of involvement in the conspiracy behind the murder of rebel Marxist leader TP Chandrasekharan of Onchiyam, Kozhikode even as the State Government began taking steps to hand over the probe into the conspiracy to the CBI.
The CPI(M) offensive came in the form of an allegation raised by its Kozhikode district secretariat member P Mohanan, who was 14th accused in the murder case, that the police had put pressure on him to State that State party secretary Pinarayi Vijayan and State secretariat member Elamaram Kareem had participated in the conspiracy to kill Chandrasekharan.
Mohanan, who was acquitted by the trial court on January 22, said in Kozhikode that his interrogators headed by Superintendent of Police Anup Kuruvila John had tortured him to make him implicate Pinarayi and Kareem.
“Their effort was to make me say that the conspiracy to kill Chandrasekharan was hatched at the party’s district committee office in Kozhikode,” he said.
“They used threats and offers for this,” said Mohanan. According to him, the police threatened him by saying that they would trap his wife KK lathika, a CPI(M) MlA, and children in false cases and tried to entice him by promising to make the charge against less grave if he named Pinarayi and Elamaram Kareem in his statement.
The CPI(M) leader also said that he had undergone torture in the police’s interrogation camp for two full days. “The torture was so severe that I had felt those two days as 12 years,” Mohanan said, adding that the police had acted with some kind of determination which was obvious from his “dramatic arrest”.
Mohanan was arrested as an accused in the Chandrasekharan murder case on June 29, 2012 from Koilandy, some 25 km north of Kozhikode by stunning him and the other CPI(M) leaders accompanying him. CPI(M)-watchers said that Mohanan’s statement and the indefinite dharna being held by the relatives of the convicts in the murder case at the gates of the Central Prison at Viyyur, Thrissur were part of a determined move to accuse the State Government and the police of indulging in a conspiracy with respect to the Chandrasekharan murder case. Relatives of the nine convicts, who were shifted to Viyyur from the Central Prison in Kannur last week, had started an indefinite sit-in on Monday demanding action against the prison officials who had allegedly tortured them. Chandrasekharan was hacked to death by a Marxist killer gang at Onchiyam on the night of May 4, 2012.
Meanwhile, the Government began taking steps to announce a CBI probe into the conspiracy behind the murder even as the indefinite fast by KK Rama, widow of the slain rebel leader, at the gates of the State Secretariat in Thiruvananthapuram entered the second day, Tuesday.
The Government is expected to announce the CBI probe after a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday. A new case pertaining to the conspiracy was registered at the police station at Edacheri, Kozhikode as a first step to instituting a CBI probe.
This was done as per the legal advice the Government had got from the Director General of Prosecutions on the basis of a letter from Rama to the Home Ministry seeking CBI investigation.
The DGP advised the Government that it would be improper to seek a CBI probe in connection with the murder case as that had already been settled after proper trial. Therefore, the new case had been registered in connection with the conspiracy against Chandrasekharan allegedly hatched in 2009.