Retaliatory political murder  goes unabated  despite rigor of retribution

By  our  legal correspondent

Thrissur, Feb 02 (IVC) The Mavelikkara (Alappuzha)   First  Additional  District and  Sessions Court judge V G Sreedevi  on January 30 awarded capital  punishment to the all 15-accused  in  the sensational  murder  of Advocate Ranjith Sreenivasan  on  December 19, 2021.

                According  to  prosecution,  the accused  had encroached the house of      Sreenivasan , BJP’s  tributary  organization  of Other Backward Classes Morcha State  Secretary  at  Vellakinar (Alappuzha)  on December 19, 2021  early  morning  and they  hacked  brutally to death  Sreenivasan  in the presence of his mother, wife and daughter. 

                According to legal experts here, it  was perhaps the first time in the judicial history of the State that all the 15 accused in  a murder case to award capital punishment at a stretch.

                The  prosecution submitted  before the honorable court that the murder of Sreenivasn  was a rarest of rare crime and the accused deserved  the  maximum  punishment and judge readily  agreed with the submissions of the prosecution and awarded capital  punishment to  all the accused.

                The   prosecution  also submitted that all the accused were the activists of  the now-proscribed Peoples Front  of India (PFI)  and Social  Democratic Party  of India (SDPI). The  convicted are :  Naisam,  Sameer Salam, Ajmal, Abdul Kalam, Manshad, Abdul  Kalam, Shaji alias   Poovathil Shaji, Nazir,  Sakir  Hussain , Mohhammed  Aslam, Anoop, Saffruddin  Jaseeb R,  Shernas Ashraf and Navas, the prosecution added. All the convicted  hailed   from Alappuzha.

                The  tenth accused  Navaz  could not be produced before the court, as he was undergoing  treatment in the Government Medical College hospital at Thiruvanathapuram, the prosecution said.

                The  murder  of  Sreenivasan  was considered  trigger  for the murder of SDPI’s State  Secretary  K S Shan .  Shan  , 38 years,   was   attacked by assailants  at Kuppezham  junction  at Mannnchery   on December 18, 2021.

                The  provocation for the murder  of Shan was killing of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)  worker nandukumar  , 22  years by SDPI workers at Vayalar in Alappuzha on February  24, 2021.

                Political murder and counter-murder  was being practiced n Kerala for several years. Earlier, the Honorable trial  court had awarded the capital  punished to the accused five in the sensational  murder  of  K T Jayakrishnan in Kannur  some years ago.

                Jayakrishnan a teacher  and   BJP’s  Youth  Morcha  leader was done to death by  the  CPI(M) activists in  the presence of classroom when he was taking  class for the students. Though the High  Court Kerala upheld the capital  punishment to all the five accused, the Honorable Supreme  Court  of India  on appeal  commuted  the punishment of one accused to rigorous life imprisonment  and four others were  acquitted in the  absence of evidence..  

                The leading criminologists and  sociologists were very  anxious o f the intermittent  political murder and  counter-murder  in the State .They  attributed  to the support of the political  parties  to the accused  for the increasing number of murders in which youths were done to death. It  is high time for all the political parties to stop violence and murder for the growth  of their  political  parties.  They said  “ murder remains murder whatever may  be the ideological veneer”.