A Division Bench of the Kerala High Court has set aside the Palakkad Additional Sessions Court verdict convicting and awarding life imprisonment to five RSS workers in connection with the murder of two CPI(M) workers.
The prosecution case was that the accused had hatched a criminal conspiracy at a BJP office near the Nilampathi bridge at Kadukkamkunnam and murdered CPI(M) workers Gopalakrishnan and Raveendran in 2007.
Two other accused had earlier been acquitted of the charges by the sessions court. The acquitted are Manikandan, Kuttayi, Murukadas, Udesh, and Gireesh.
The Bench, while acquitting the five RSS workers, observed that the prosecution had failed to prove the case beyond reasonable doubt.
The court noted that the police had shown undue haste to register the FIR. The investigation was shaky. If at all nobody had witnessed the incident the investigating agency should have taken pains and put in an effort to investigate the case on circumstantial evidence.
