The charge of sexual abuse against Janata Dal (S) MlA Jose Thettayil, a former State Minister, has led to the disruption of peace in Kerala’s CPI(M)-led Opposition lDF with some constituents and leaders demanding his immediate resignation even as the case against the legislator has become murkier as some of the key evidences are missing.
CPI, the second biggest constituent of the lDF, has put forward its firm demand that Thettayil, one of the four JD(S) MlAs in the Kerala Assembly, should resign on moral grounds. Opposition leader VS Achuthanandan, known as the crusader in Kerala against all sorts of atrocities against women, also has raised this demand.
However, the official leadership of the CPI(M) heading the left combine is of the view that there is no need for the front to take a decision on the issue until the final opinion of the Janata Dal(S) comes. State CPI(M) secretary Pinarayi Vijayan had sought to underplay the scandal when newsmen approached him after and lDF meeting at Thiruvananthapuram last Tuesday.
The Janata Dal(S) is sore at the position the CPI and Achuthanandan have taken with regard to the Thettayil issue. Sources in the JD(S) said that it was improper for the lDF constituents to decide whether an MlA of that party should resign over the issue. “Suggestions are all right. But suggestions should not assume the air of demand,” said a JD(S) source.
On Friday, Pinarayi told State Janata Dal president Mathew T Thomas that there was no need for Thettayil to resign immediately. At the discussions they held at Kozhikode, the CPI(M) leader told Mathew T Thomas that a decision on the issue could be taken after observing the new developments in State politics.
At the same time, a meeting of the State executive committee of the CPI at Thiruvananthapuram on Friday ratified the decision taken by its State secretariat the other day to extend total support to Achuthanandan over his demand for Thettayil’s resignation. However, the party would not publicly announce the decision till a consensus or the lack of it emerges within the lDF.
According to observers, the Thettayil issue has thus led to the disruption of peace in the lDF, mainly between the CPI and the CPI(M), established just a month away after a long but silent standoff between the two parties over crucial political issues including the front’s disability to launch effective anti-Government agitations due to feuds within the CPI(M).
The official CPI(M) leadership and the Janata Dal (S) are worried that the front would not be able to retain Thettayil’s Angamaly seat in a by-election after his resignation. The JD(S) is also worried that the CPI(M), playing big brother, might try to take over the Angamaly seat from it if the party loses it in a by-election, as the Marxists have done in the past.
Meanwhile, the case against Thettayil (63), taken on the complaint of a 30-year-old woman from his own constituency that he and his son Adarsh (26) had been abusing her sexually for the past two years, got murkier as crucial evidences — webcam and laptop computer used by the woman for recording scenes of the abuse and its unedited video — have gone missing.
The woman has said that she had given the webcam and laptop to Thettayil earlier after he agreed to permit the marriage between her and his son but the police still refuse to trust her on this. The special Crime Branch team of the Kerala Police probing the woman’s allegation searched Thettayil’s house in Angamaly for these articles.