The seal of approval given by Chief Minister Oommen Chandy to hand over the reprobe into the murder of Bharatiya Yuva Morcha state leader K T Jayakrishnan to the CBI, has evoked sharp reactions from the CPM leadership.
However, the BJP welcomed it. “It is the frantic reaction of Chandy following his alleged involvement in the solar panel scam, and a calculated move to mellow the stand against him on the issue by the BJP,” said E P Jayarajan, the CPM central committee member.
At the same time, former state president of the BJP and the national council member of the party, P K Krishnadas, said, “The Jayakrishnan murder case and the CBI probe demanded by the BJP have nothing to do with the present crisis confronting the chief minister. We had sought a detailed investigation into the conspiracy behind the murder of Jayakrishnan, right from the beginning.”
The government had constituted a special investigation team of the state police to hold a re-probe into the Jayakrishnan murder case, following a startling disclosure made by T K Rajeesh, one of the accused in the T P Chandrasekharan muder case, that those convicted by the court in the murder of Jayakrishnan weren’t the real culprits.
Rajeesh had also disclosed the names of the real culprits even as he confessed his own involvement in the murder. As the government decided to reprobe the case constituting a special investigation team headed by a Deputy Superintendent of police, Rajeesh retracted his confessional statement stating that it all was a forced confession while being in police custody.
The reinvestigation by the special team met with a stalemate, when the team failed to make any headway on the issue, and informed the government that only a Central agency could go ahead with the reprobe.
Said BJP leader P K Krishna Das: “We had again approached Chandy, seeking a CBI probe after the Special investigation team of the state police expressed its inability to go ahead with the probe.” Krishna Das further stated that the BJP was planning to step up the stir demanding a reinvestigation when the state took a final decision on the issue. It was on December 1,1999, that Yuva Morcha leader K T Jayarkrihnan was murdered in an open class room at the East Mokeri U P School.