Four Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI) workers were arrested on Saturday in connection with the murder of a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) worker at Kommeri, near here, on January 19.
The arrested have been identified as Muhammad Basheer, Saleem Hamsa, Ameer Abdul Rahman and Shaheem Shamsudheen. The police said the four had been nabbed from near Boys Town by the Thalappuzha police in Wayanad district.
The police said Shyam Prasad (24), RSS functionary of nearby Kannavam, had been allegdly hacked to death on January 19 evening by the arrested.
The victim had been riding a motorcycle with his friend at Kommeri when the four, travelling in a car, intercepted him and stabbed him. Though he tried to enter a nearby house, the masked assailants hacked him to death on the verandah of the house.
The police said the car, identified by the information provided by the victim's friend who was riding with him, was seized.
According to the police, the murder of the RSS worker was suspected to be in retaliation for the attack on SDPI worker T.P. Ayub (22) by alleged RSS workers at Chittariparamba here on January 11.
Additional forces have been deployed in the area in view of the tension following the murder.
The body would be taken in a funeral procession from the Pariyaram Medical College Hospital, where the post-mortem was done, to his home at Kannavam. The body was kept for public viewing at Taliparamba, Kannur, Koothuparamba and Kannavam. The body was cremated near his house at Kannavam around 6 p.m.
Hartal near-total
The hartal called by the BJP in the district in protest against the murder drew near-total response. Shops and commercial establishments remained closed. Vehicles have been exempted from the hartal. BJP workers staged a march here to condemn the murder.
Condemning the murder, BJP district president P. Sathyaprakash said the Islamic jihadi extremists and communists had now become almost like Siamese twins. Alleging that the CPI(M) was responsible for making Kannur into a source of Islamic extremism, he said the CPI(M) leadership was downplaying and giving respectability to the anti-national positions of ‘Islamic extremists.’
