Rebel’s murder: CPM role becoming clearer

The role of the Kerala CPI(M) in the May 4 killing of rebel leader TP Chandrasekharan of Onchiyam, Kozhikode became more obvious with KC Ramachandran, a local leader of the party, admitting on Wednesday that he had hired the hoodlums who committed the murder. Ramachandran’s confession came within 24 hours of the arrest of another local Marxist leader.

The developments in the past two days have created a general feeling in the Kerala society that the repeated claims of the State CPI(M) leadership that it has nothing to with the killing of Chandrasekharan, leader of the Revolutionary Marxist Party (RMP) floated by the rebels of Onchiyam after departure from the CPI(M) in 2008, are hollow.

The police on Wednesday recorded the arrests of four more accused, including Ramachandran, in the case even as a court in Kunnamangalam, Kozhikode remanded in custody the five accused arrested on Tuesday. They included Padayankandi Raveendran, a member of the CPI(M)’s Orkatteri local committee, who had pointed out Chandrasekharan to the killers.

The court allowed the police to keep Raveendran in their custody for 14 days while the other four would remain in police custody for four days. According to the police, the three persons arrested along with Ramachandran on Wednesday had close connections with the CPI(M).

Ramachandran, member of the party’s Kunnummakkara local committee, told the police that he had arranged the gang of killers out of personal enmity towards Chandrasekharan but the police did not attach much importance to this. Ramachandran said that Chandrasekharan had trapped him in a false case earlier following which he had to spend 15 days in prison.

He told the police that he had arranged the killers, whom he knew closely, for a total “fee” of Rs 50,000 but the police are refusing to trust this also. According to sources in the police, it was impossible to get a gang to kill a leader of Chandrasekharan’s stature for an amount as small as Rs 50,000 but Ramachandran insisted that he could arrange it as the killers were familiar to him.

According to the police, Ramachandran was only one of the lowest links in the conspiracy. They have reportedly received enough information to believe that he was only obeying the instructions of a Marxist heavyweight from the neighbouring Kannur district. Records of the telephone calls he had made before and after the murder strengthened this suspicion, sources said.

The arrests and the police’s findings are sure to complicate the problems already faced by the Kannur lobby in the CPI(M), which is headed by none other than State party secretary Pinarayi Vijayan. Even earlier, there were complaints that the Kannur lobby had sent assailants to Onchiyam to attack RMP activists.

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