Why K Karunakaran and Congress not crucified for Varghese fake encounter?

The media and secularists who cried for the blood of former Gujarat Home Minister and Narendra Modi in connection with the encounter killing of Lashkar e Taiba terrorist Sohrabuddin is silent over the role of Congress leaders and then Home Minister K Karunakaran  in connection with the murder of Naxalite leader A Varghese.

The credit for criminalising and politicising the Kerala police goes to K. Karunakaran, former Congress Chief Minister. Police officials like present DGP Raman Shrivastava, the then DIG Jayaram Padickal, the then SP Lakshmana to name a few acted like his domestic servants. The torture and death due to rolling (urutal) of Rajan (during emergency) took place during his implementation of the draconian regime. Congress leaders took sadistic pleasure in hearing the cries of tortured RSS men over telephone. The murder of arrested Naxalite leader Varghese during emergency was under CBI probe due to disclosure of the repentant constable who confessed of shooting him point blank.  

Lifer for ex-IGP for Maoist’s murder
VR Jayaraj | Kochi– Daily Pioneer

The Special CBI Court in Kochi on Thursday sentenced former Inspector General of Police K Lakshmana to life imprisonment in the case relating to the murder of Naxalite leader A Varghese over forty years ago. Lakshmana, now in his mid-70s, was also slapped with a fine of Rs 10,000.

Awarding the punishment, Judge S Vijayakumar, who had the other day convicted Lakshmana, second accused in the case, said that Varghese was shot to death by the police after capture and that he was not killed in encounter. Varghese was killed on February 18, 1970 in the forests of Thirunelli, Wayanad.

The judge had acquitted the third accused, former DGP P Vijayan, giving him the benefit of doubt. The first accused, former CRPF constable Ramachandran Nair who had shot Varghese to death on the orders of his superiors including Lakshmana, died in 2006. The CBI took over the probe into the killing in 1998 on a Kerala High Court directive.

“No more evidence is needed. It is proved beyond any shadow of reasonable doubt that Varghese, who was caught hold of live, was brutally killed by the first accused who was a stooge at the hands of Lakshmana who on his order brought about his plan,” the judge said in the verdict.

The public prosecutor had requested the court to give the accused the maximum punishment as it was one of the rarest of the rare cases, an argument with which the judge disagreed. However, he agreed that it was a case of brutality and therefore was awarding punishment in that consideration.
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The judge said that no investigation agency, including the police, had the authority to award punishment to people. Their duty was to investigate cases and bring the culprits before the courts, he said. What had happened in the case of Varghese was a violation of democratic principles, he pointed out.

Lakshmana had pleaded before the court for maximum leniency as he was in his seventies and had requested that he be sent to Central Prison, Poojappura in Thiruvananthapuram.

The killing of Varghese was seen as an “encounter death” till 1998 when Ramachandran Nair came out with the revelation that he had shot Varghese dead at point blank on the orders of his superiors. Nair had also submitted an affidavit stating this.

Rights organizations and political activists had sought reopening of the case and a detailed investigation by the CBI after the revelations by Nair, who had said that he revealed the truth to clear his conscience. Nair had written an autobiography giving the details of the circumstances under which he had shot Varghese to death.

Varghese, hailing from Ernakulam district, had migrated to Wayanad in his childhood along with his family. After school, he became active in the CPI(M). However, during Kerala’s Naxalite years of late 1960s, he left the CPI(M) to become a campaigner of the Naxalite outfit, CPI(ML).

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