KASARAGOD: Chittarikkal police have booked Lok Sabha member Rajmohan Unnithan for the alleged character assassination of the family of James Panthamakkal, Congress rebel and vice-president of East Eleri grama panchayat. He is accused of making defamatory speech against Panthamakkal’s mother and uploading the speech on Facebook, said Chittarikkal sub-inspector K P Vinod Kumar.
The MP has been charged with Section 120 (o) of the Kerala Police Act for causing nuisance of himself or to any person by making undesirable speech. If convicted, Unnithan may face up to one year in jail or may be slapped with a fine of Rs 5,000 or both. The complaint was filed by Panthamakkal’s brother Varghese P M.
Unnithan made the speech on August 14 in Chittarikkal, where Congress workers gave a reception to Mathew Padinjarel (54), the Chittarikkal Mandalam president of the party. Padinjarel, accused of assaulting Panthamakkal last year, was arrested on August 11 and got bail on August 14. Calling Panthamakkal a Judas for “betraying” the Congress, Unnithan said the panchayat vice-president was obsessed with taking revenge on his former party colleagues.
“If you go by Jesus’ Sermon on the mount as told in Matthew 5: 38 to 42, James is not even a Christian. Padinjarel’s father suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, and mother was dependent on a walker,” Unnithan said.
“He thinks Pinarayi Vijayan will be the chief minister of Kerala forever. He is acting as if a communist worker had taken refuge in his house long ago,” he added. Though the sentence appeared innocuous, the innuendo was not missed by the crowd, which broke into a loud laughter.
He then went on to ask the Congress workers to come together and defeat Panthamakkal in the next local body election and “put an end to James’s arrogance”.
In 2015 local body election, Panthamakkal led a group of Congress dissenters and floated Democratic Development Front (DDF) and went on to decimate the party in its stronghold of East Eleri. Since then, the Congress has clawed back in the panchayat, winning the election to the Chittarikkal cooperative bank.
In a bid to instill confidence among his supporters, he called a public meeting on April 28, 2018 at Chittarikkal. In the meeting, he criticised the church for siding with the Congress. The next day, a Sunday, the priest gave a speech countering Panthamakkal.
This led to a fight between Congress workers and Panthamakkal’s supporters and the panchayat vice-president broke his arm.
Both the groups filed attempt to murder cases against each other.