The Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the murder of RMP leader T P Chandrasekharan took the statement of CPM Onchiyam local secretary V P Gopalakrishnan for his controversial speech threatening to chop off Chandrasekharan’s head way back in 2010.
The SIT grilled Gopalakrishnan for two hours and enquired about the circumstances that led to make such a speech against the RMP leader. Sources said that the investigators are examining the statement of Gopalakrishnan and would be taken to custody later if needed. The CPM leader’s speech has been taken seriously by the police as there was a murder attempt against Chandrasekharan in 2009. SIT is investigating if the public threat against the leader was an indication about Gopalakrishnan’s prior knowledge about the conspiracy to eliminate Chandrasekharan.
The video clipping of Gopalakrishnan’s speech at a meeting organised to protest against the attack on CPM workers by the RMP activists on February 5, 2010, was telecast by channels last week. The leader was found pubicly threatening that the RMP leader would be killed if he carried on with the attack on CPM workers in Onchiyam. “Chandrasekharan himself was leading the assailant group. The CPM at Onchiyam has the might to overcome these types of challenges. We will put an end to the violence of this scamp gang at any cost. Chandrasekharan should realise that the CPM has the power and will to finish him off if any communist activist loses a strand of hair or sustain even a minute injury in the attacks unleashed by the assailant group led by him,” he said in his speech.
CPM district secretariat member and then Onchiyam area committee secretary C Bhaskaran had also attended the meeting besides Orkatteri local committee member Padayankandi Raveendran and Onchiyam area committee member K K Krishnan.
Meanwhile, the interrogation of other accused - CPM district secretariat member P Mohanan and Panoor Area Committee member P K Kunjananthan - is going on at the SIT office in Vadakara. Though the SIT has already received evidence against senior CPM leaders, the investigators are waiting for concrete evidence.
Police believe that the developments in the CBI probe in the Fasal murder case and the SIT probe in the Shukoor murder case would in a way stands significant in the probe against Chandrasekharan murder as well.