KOZHIKODE: The state government’s submission on the Naxal Varghese encounter killing has triggered a major controversy. For it was in the same case former Inspector-General of Police K Lakshmana was sentenced to life imprisonment for plotting a fake encounter to kill Varghese.
IG Lakshmana was sentenced by a CBI Special Court on October 28, 2010 after he was convicted for plotting the fake encounter in the Thirunelli forest in Wayanad on February 18, 1970. He was found guilty of the offence punishable under Section 302 (murder), read with Section 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) of the IPC.
However, the latest submission by the state government that Naxal Varghese was a notorious criminal who tried to attack the police and got killed in an encounter with the police has put to question the conviction of Lakshmana.Senior lawyers told “Express’ the state government had exposed its “voidness” by making such a submission.The government filed the “controversial” submission on July 22, 2016 in response to a petition filed by Varghese’s relatives seeking compensation. Activist Gro Vasu, a contemporary of Varghese, said the submission by the state government had come as a shocker.
“The state government wants to deny compensation to the family of Varghese and, for the purpose, they had made such a twisted submission,” he said. The CBI probe was ordered based on the revelations by former police constable P Ramachandran Nair in 1998 he shot dead Varghese on the orders of then SP Vijayan and then DySP Lakshmana. Nair died in November 2006.IG Lakshmana, now settled in Thiruvananthapuram, was released from prison in July 2013 based on the state government’s decision to release him considering his age and poor health under the provisions of the Kerala Prisons Rules 1958.