M.V. Balakrishnan, Kasaragod district secretary of the CPI(M), said here on Thursday that the party had no role in the murder of Youth Congress activists Sarath Lal and Kripesh in Periye.
Not all those arrested were CPI(M) activists. The detained persons were innocent and knew nothing about the murders. The people and the party here knew this, Mr. Balakrishnan said. Despite this, CPI(M) leaders were arrested by the CBI. However, the party would not remain idle, he said, responding to the inclusion of former Uduma MLA and district secretariat member K.V. Kunhiraman as an accused in the case.
The CBI included Kunhiraman as the 20th accused after the agency found him to have assisted the persons who carried out the murder.
Mr. Balakishnan said that in the last Assembly elections, the people of Pullur-Periye panchayat, where the murders took place, would have voted against the party if it had been involved in the crime.
‘Usual strategy’
Reacting to the development, Congress leader and MP, Rajmohan Unnithan, demanded that the CPI(M) end its usual strategy of disowning the crime after a murder. He said those accused in the Periye case were CPI(M) office bearers. He demanded that ₹2 crore spent in defence of the accused should be deposited back into the exchequer and the Chief Minister should apologise for it.Leader of Opposition V.D. Satheesan said that CPI(M) had become akin to terrorist groups that carried out assassinations. Speaking to the media here on Thursday, he said the CPI(M)’s efforts to prove itself innocent had failed with the CBI finding the involvement of its leaders, including a former MLA.
In democracies world over, there was no other organisation that committed such premeditated murders, he said. He accused the government of spending huge sums of money from the treasury to protect the accused.
Commenting on the BJP workers chanting provocative slogans in Thalassery, he said the Sangh Parivar was trying to create communal divisions. Both the Congress and the UDF would oppose communalism by the majority and minority, he said.
