KANNUR: The north Kerala district of Kannur witnessed yet another political murder last Monday. Blood once again splashed when 27-year-old Sujith was hacked to death allegedly by 15 CPI(M) workers in Pappinassery panchayat in front of his parents. “Political enmity took my son’s life. CPI(M) workers had threatened him even before,” said Sujith’s father Janardhanan P. The Left party, however, has denied any role in the RSS worker’s murder. “It was not a political murder but an incident involving local issues,” said CPI(M) state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan.
Sujith is the last of the 41 people killed in the name of politics in Kannur in the last decade. Of the deceased, 17 have been from the RSS alone. “Since 1980 there were over 200 people, mostly young men, killed in Kannur. It was in 1968 that the first political murder was reported from Kannur—Ramakrishnan of Vadikkal, a RSS worker was killed at the hands of CPI(M). In 1978 Panunda Chandran, another RSS man was killed,” said CP Suresh Babu, RSS functionary.
But the series of murders started shocking the state since 1980. Since the murder of Kathiroor Manoj, a RSS district functionary on September 1, 2014, RSS had decided against retaliation as it saw the murder as CPI(M)’s ploy to check the large-scale crossover of CPI(M) workers into the BJP fold. P Jayarajan, the CPI(M) district secretary, is now in jail for Manoj’s murder. “The party had lost the lives of 78 cadres in Kannur. It is CPI(M)’s intolerance that leads to the political violence,” said BJP national organising secretary Ramlal. According to police records, around 3,500 incidents of political violence and 36 killings have happened in Kannur in the last five years.
In Kannur, known as the citadel of CPI(M), intolerance of the CPI(M) towards the functioning of other political parties and outfits is nothing new. What is evidently horrifying is that the Left party is virtually terrorising relatively smaller parties.
The Left party had been holding its red forts across the district by converting many villages into party villages and controlling every activity. Naturally, organisations like RSS are putting up strong resistance by creating their own ‘Saffron villages’. There lies the tussle.
CPI(M) central committee member and Kannur MLA E P Jayarajan said, “The party is resisting all communal and fundamentalist forces. But the right wing media tries to unleash a campaign that CPI(M) was behind all such incidents.”
In Focus
Since 1980, 200 people, mostly young men, have been killed in Kannur.
Sujith is the last of the 41 people killed in the name of politics in Kannur over the last decade.
Of the deceased, 17 were from RSS alone. 3,500 incidents of political violence have happened in Kannur in the last five years.
It was in 1968 that the first political murder was reported from Kannur—Ramakrishnan of Vadikkal, a RSS worker, was killed at the hands of CPI(M).