The telecast of a video footage of a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) worker’s alleged confession in police custody that Muhammad Fazal, National Development Front (NDF) worker at Thalassery, was stabbed to death by a group of RSS workers is set to stir a fresh confrontation between the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaderships over the murder case probed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which found that the murder was masterminded by two local party leaders of Thalassery.
The CPI(M) and the BJP leaders had been at loggerheads over the disclosure of the police in November last about the alleged confession by RSS worker Subheesh during his questioning after his arrest in the murder of CPI(M) worker K. Mohanan at Valankichal, near Koothuparamba, on October 10. In the aftermath of the police disclosure then, the CPI(M) leadership here said that the confession vindicated what it had been saying for the past few years that the RSS was behind the murder. The BJP district leadership had then countered it by saying that the confession was forced to script a new story to save party leaders Karayi Rajan and Karayi Chandrashekharan who were among the eight CPI(M) workers arraigned in the case by the CBI.
The controversial confession of the RSS workers gives a new twist to the case probed by the CBI. According to the CBI, the plot to murder Fazal had been hatched because of the local CPI(M) leadership’s animosity. Fazal had been a CPI(M) worker before he joined the NDF. In the wake of the disclosure by Subeesh that the murder had been carried out by a four-member gang of Sangh Parivar workers, the district police had submitted a detailed report to the Director General of Police. Fazal had been murdered on October 22, 2006.
BJP national executive member P.K. Krishnadas alleged that the CPI(M) was trying to sabotage the rule of law and justice by misusing power. Addressing a press conference here on Friday, he said all the accused in the murder case except the two leaders had been arrested during the previous Left Democratic Front rule when party State secretary Kodiyeryi Balakrishnan was the Home Minister. The BJP leader also alleged that the police had threatened Subeesh and the CPI(M) had promised him favours including job if he had made the ‘confession’.
The CPI(M) district leadership here is yet to make any public statement on the latest development, though it had been alleging that Karayi Rajan and Karayi Chandrashekharan had been falsely implicated in the murder case.
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