KOCHI: The Kerala High Court on Wednesday dismissed a petition seeking a CBI inquiry into seven murder cases in which eight BJP activists lost their lives after the CPM-led LDF Government came to power in the state. While considering the petition, the bench comprising Chief Justice Antony Dominic and Justice Dama Seshadri Naidu observed, “The ‘P’ in PIL here stands, of all the expression—Public, Private, Political, Promotional— for Political”.
The court further pointed out the court can transfer the investigation to the CBI when the investigation by the state police is found to be deliberately delayed, flawed or perverted, or when the investigating agency acts to the dictates of the superior officers or political bosses or when the court feels the investigation will not enable the court to do complete justice, or to instil confidence in the public.
However, the petitioner had not placed any material demonstrating out any of these contingencies, warranting the exercise of the court’s extraordinary power, in a federal set up, of transferring the investigation to an external agency, in this case the CBI.The petition was filed by R K Premdas, secretary of the Thalassery-based Gopalan Adiyodi Vakkeel Smaraka Trust. As per the petition, the accused in all these seven cases were active workers of a major outfit, which is part of the ruling front. It also alleged that in some cases, party activists hailing from the constituency of the Chief Minister, who also holds the Home portfolio, were involved. The trust had alleged the police did not properly investigate the conspiracy angle in these cases.
The High Court added the petitioner “lacks the locus and bona fides to espouse the cause in the name of public interest when it concerns with only parochial political score-settling”.The court noted “the victims come from either side of the political divide, most of them from the poorer strata; and the murders on either side happened in quick succession. Despite that, why the trust, seemingly espousing a public cause, chose to complain about murders only on one side, and why it wanted to champion the cause of only one political party. We fail to understand.”Earlier, the state government submitted before the court that the plea was politically motivated.