The 2012 murder of Revolutionary Marxist Party leader TP Chandrasekharan has returned to haunt the ruling CPM in Kerala and the timing cannot be worse. In two crucial back-to-back verdicts ahead of the parliamentary elections, the Kerala High Court has not only upheld the life sentence awarded to 10 convicts, including some CPM leaders, and set aside the trial court order acquitting two other party functionaries, but also enhanced the punishment for nine to life imprisonment without remission for 20 years. Quoting Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, the court aptly said, “Democracy thrives on the peaceful exchange of ideas, not the violent imposition of beliefs. Political violence is the poison that corrodes the roots of democratic principles.” While being exemplary in nature, the twin verdicts have destroyed the CPM’s claim that the party had nothing to do with the killing.
If the high court’s reversal of two CPM leaders’ acquittal was not damaging enough, a report by the additional district probation officer of Kozhikode said K C Ramachandran, a local leader who was sentenced to life for being one of the key conspirators, “has no guilt feeling” even after long years of confinement; another by the Kannur district probation officer said CPM sympathisers were providing a monthly assistance of `5,000 to the family of Muhammed Shafi, a member of the killer gang. While the RMP has consistently maintained the murder was carried out at the instance of top CPM leadership, there are enough reasons to suspect that the arm of the law did not go beyond the local leaders because of either collusion at the highest levels or inefficiencies.
Coming on the back of a Mavelikkara court order awarding the death sentence to 15 PFI activists for the murder of a BJP leader in 2021, the high court verdicts hold out hope against the continuing chain of political murders in Kerala. That Chandrasekharan, a former CPM leader who rebelled and formed his own outfit, was seen as a political threat was reason enough to eliminate him shows how violence is ingrained in state politics. As the high court pointed out, the crime threatened to undermine democratic principles. For the CPM now, mere arguments may not be enough to shake off the responsibility. It must do something tangible to show it has distanced itself from the killers and shunned the politics of violence for good.