ABVP activist’s killing: Shutdown total in Kannur

 The dawn-to-dusk shutdown in Kannur on Thursday, called by the BJP to protest against the killing of ABVP worker Sachin Gopal (20) by Campus Front of India activists, was total and peaceful even as the ABVP struck studies across Kerala.

Shops and commercial establishments remained closed in Kannur as people opted to remain at home. Public vehicles kept off the roads though the BJP had made it clear that roads would not be blocked as part of the hartal. Attendance in government offices was reportedly skeletal. Apart from a few incidents of stone-pelting no untoward incidents were reported.

The police used force on ABVP activists in several places during marches taken out in protest against the killing of Sachin, a diploma student and member of the ABVP’s Kannur town committee. In Thiruvananthapuram, the police used water cannon to disperse ABVP activists who took out a march to the State secretariat.

Sachin, son of Gopalan Manikkathil, an autorikshaw driver at Kottali, Kannur was brutally attacked by activists of the Campus Front, the students’ wing of Islamist outfit Popular Front of India, on July 6 at Pallikkunnu in Kannur. He succumbed to the stab injuries he suffered in the attack at a private hospital in Mangalore on Wednesday night.

The police, who had earlier arrested two Campus Front activists in connection with the incident, have intensified the probe after Sachin’s death. Sources said that about ten persons were under the police scanner and that some of them could be arrested soon.

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