NEW DELHI: Even after so many years, there is no answer as to why Kerala strongman Pinarayi Vijayan and his CPM are so scared of CBI. Each time there is a demand for a CBI enquiry into political murders involving CPM workers, Vijayan and company takes cover behind the “very efficient” Kerala police. “The enquiry is moving in the right direction… so no need for bringing in central agency,” comrades parrot in unison. And if the court interferes and orders a CBI enquiry, then the Left Front government will go to any extent to stall the same, even if it is at the cost of the state exchequer. When it comes to their own men, CPM has no qualms to spend people’s money to defend the accused. And the people’s Chief Minister will stand up in the state Assembly and proudly proclaim that his government would spend more money to stop CBI in its tracks. The latest example is the Periya double murder of two Youth Congress workers that rocked the state in February last year, weeks before the general elections. Kripesh and Sharath Lal, both in their twenties, were hacked to death allegedly by a group of CPM workers in Periya of northern Kasaragod district on 17 February 2019. While both the chief minister and his party state secretary distanced themselves from the murders, all the accused are active members of the CPM. Immediately after the murder, Vijayan had claimed that “no sensible CPM worker would do such a thing just before elections”. However, as the events unfolded, it was clear that the murders were planned by the CPM local committee members, but the execution was done in “Kannur style”. This aspect gave suspicion that party higher-ups from the nearby district were involved in the crime. It was at this point that the family of the victims and the opposition demanded a CBI enquiry to get to the root of the crime.
On 30 September last, following an appeal by the family members, a single bench of the High Court cancelled the charge sheet prepared by the state Crime Branch which probed into the murders and asked the CBI to take over the case as it feared that justice would not be done by the Kerala police. The court had pointed out that even the forensic report had not been included in the charge sheet. The police had also not taken seriously that the accused went to the party office immediately after the crim. “If this is allowed to continue, the accused will go scot free,” the court had observed. The government quickly went in appeal against the single bench order. “The state government was against the order and so we appealed against it. The government is well within its right to appeal against the order,” Vijayan told the Assembly early this week. The High Court division bench order is still pending where leading lawyers from Delhi were brought to argue the government case. The government has spent a total of Rs88 lakhs so far in the case. Congress MLA Shafi Parambil, who moved the adjournment motion on the issue, wanted to know why the government was spending so much money to prevent the CBI from probing the case if CPM men were not involved in the murders. “The money is not given from the AKG Centre (state CPM headquarters)…but from the taxpayers’ hard-earned money,” Shafi pointed out. Vijayan was quick to reply that any action taken in the name of the government, the money would be paid from the government funds. He did not stop there.
“We will spent even more to get more clarity on the issue,” he said, clearly hinting that the government would even go to the Supreme Court if need be. This is not the first time the CPM has gone to any extent to block CBI probe into cases involving party men. And whenever CBI had taken over the case, involvement of CPM’s top leadership had come to light. P Jayarajan, CPM’s alleged apostle of murder politics in Kannur, has been slapped with murder and conspiracy charges by the CBI in the sensational, Taliban style murder of a young Muslim League worker Ariyil Shukoor in 2012.
Shukoor was hacked to death in a paddy field with hundreds of women and children witnessing the act. Shukoor was accused of pelting stones at a convoy of Jayarajan. For years, CPM resisted CBI probe. The perseverance of Shukoor’s mother paid off with the CBI finally taking over the case. Jayarajan is also accused of another murder charge by the CBI. Both the cases are still continuing. A defiant CPM had even fielded Jayarajan in the last parliamentary elections as a “victim of murder politics”! The party has even set up a corpus fund, some say running into crores of rupees, to fight such cases alone. The Priya murders had cost the party dearly in the general elections, with CPM losing all its strongholds by huge margins across north Kerala. The state party leadership seems to have seized of the matter: the state has not witnessed any political murder in the past one year. There is no answer as to why CPM is scared of CBI probe into political murders. Leader of the opposition Ramesh Chennithala had posed a direct question to Pinarayi Vijayan in the Assembly: What have you got to fear if there is no blood in your hands? Kerala is still awaiting an answer.