The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) team probing the Shukkoor murder case, in which Communist Party of India (Marxist) district unit secretary P. Jayarajan and CPI(M) MLA T.V. Rajesh are facing charges of conspiracy, quizzed a Taliparamba-based local reporter of an eveninger.
M.K. Manoharan, reporter of Makthab , was summoned before CBI investigating officer Y. Hari Kumar, Additional Superintendent of Police, CBI Special Crime Branch, Thiruvananthapuram, at the CBI team’s camp office at the PWD Guest House at Thalassery on August 18. Mr. Manoharan was reportedly present as part of his work as journalist at Ariyil, near Taliparamba, where the two CPI(M) leaders had been attacked in the morning on February 20, 2012, and at the CPI(M)-controlled Cooperative Hospital at Taliparamba where they had been admitted that day. Sources said the CBI team quizzed the reporter to know if he had heard Mr. Jayarajan directing CPI(M) Ariyil local secretary U.V. Venu to murder Indian Union Muslim League worker Abdul Shukkoor.
The 21-year-old IUML worker had been murdered on February 20, 2012, at Keezhara in the Kannapuram police station limits by a group of alleged CPI(M) workers in retaliation for the attack on Mr. Jayarajan and Mr. Rajesh earlier that day by alleged IUML workers at Ariyil. The politically sensitive murder case had been earlier probed by a special team of the State police that had charged them under Section 118 of the Indian Penal Code (concealing design to commit offence punishable with death or life imprisonment).
The case was handed over to the CBI following a High Court order last year.
The State police special team that had probed the case earlier had charged Mr. Jayarajan and Mr. Rajesh with the knowledge of the conspiracy hatched by some CPI(M) local functionaries at Keezhara to kill Shukkoor. Both the leaders were arrested in the case on August 1, 2012. Mr. Jayarajan had been in custody for 28 days.
‘Conspiracy at hospital’
According to the chargesheet prepared by the special team, a mob of CPI(M) workers had surrounded a house at Keezhara where Shukkoor and his four friends had taken refuge and held them in captivity for hours, accusing them of the attack on Mr. Jayarajan and Mr. Rajesh. It said the plot to murder the youth had been hatched in the hospital room where the two leaders had been admitted.
The High Court had directed the CBI to take over the case following a writ petition filed by the victim’s mother, P.C. Athikka. The writ was filed after the CBI refused to take over the probe despite the then UDF government recommending it. A CBI team had visited the house of the slain youth last year.
