PDP wants Kerala Govt to save Madani

Activists of the PDP of Abdul Nasser Madani on Wednesday held a road-block stir at Anvarssery, the party’s operational headquarters in Kerala’s Kollam district, demanding the intervention of the CPI(M)-led State Government to save their leader, whom the Karnataka Police had named as a key accused in the Bangalore Bombings case. The PDP was an outside ally of the CPI(M)-headed LDF in the last Lok Sabha elections.

The road-block started Wednesday afternoon when doctors and police personnel reached Anvarssery to arrest the PDP leaders observing protest fast and to shift them to the hospital. The protestors laid siege on the ambulance of the Karuagappally Taluk Hospital, brought to shift the fasting PDP leaders. The fasting leaders refused to cooperate with the doctors and the police.

The PDP workers said they were not ready for any compromise until and unless the Kerala Government intervened in the Madani issue. They said the ambulance would not be released until the District Collector, Kollam reached Anvarssery and talked with the PDP leaders. Considering the gravity of the situation, the Superintendent of Police, Kollam asked the police stations around Anvarssery to be on extra alert.

Hundreds of PDP workers had been camping at Anvarssery, where Madani was living, since June 15, the day the Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Court, Bangalore issued a non-bailable warrant against him, to resist any effort to arrest him. PDP leaders had started an indefinite fast on the same day.

Meanwhile, the Fast Track Court (5), Bangalore posted the final hearing on Madani’s anticipatory bail plea to Thursday, rejecting his lawyer’s request for two day’s time to reply to the Karnataka Police’s counter-affidavit opposing the plea. Judge Srikant Vadavatti said a min-trial had already been held on the application but the case could not be delayed further.

Madani’s lawyer had submitted a petition seeking an order to the Karnataka Police to get the PDP leader’s travel details from the Kerala Police but he later withdrew this after getting advices that it could prove counter-productive. The Karnataka Police told the court that it would not be possible to get Madani’s travel records from Kerala.

The Bangalore police had accused Madani of participating in a camp organized by LeT’s South India commander Thadiyantavide Nazeer in Coorg, Karnataka for planning the 2008 blasts. Madani’s argument was that this could not happen without the knowledge of the Kerala Police as he had been under its Category-B security ever since his release from the Coimbatore prison in 2007.

Responses