The Additional District and Sessions Court at Manjeri on Thursday sentenced B.K. Biju Nair and his friend Kunnasseri Shamsuddin alias Baputty to rigorous imprisonment for life for the murder of Chirakkal Radha, 39, in Nilambur in February last year.
The murder of the woman, which took place on February 5, 2014 at the Congress block committee office, had kicked up a political controversy when the Left parties tried to implicate Power Minister Aryadan Mohammed and his son and Nilambur Municipal Chairman Aryadan Shoukath.
The court found Biju, former member of Mr. Aryadan’s personal staff, and Shamsuddin guilty of raping, confining, murdering and robbing Radha inside the Congress office, and destroying evidence.
Judge P.S. Sasikumar awarded the sentence in a packed courtroom in the afternoon. Although separate terms were awarded to them for the different offences, the convicts will have to undergo the sentences together, making it one full life term. The judge turned down the prosecution’s plea for capital punishment. The convicts pleaded for mild verdict saying they were the sole breadwinners of their family.
The court found that Biju had killed Radha with the help of Shamsuddin when she threatened to reveal his illicit relations with some women. They murdered Radha in the Congress office by strangling her.
They were also charged with rape. Parliament had widened the scope of rape by an amendment to the Indian Penal Code (Section 375) in 2013 in the wake of protests over the Delhi gang-rape of 2012. According to the new law, penetration of any object into the private parts of a woman can be considered rape.
Radha’s body was tied in a sack and dumped in a pond at Chulliyode, near Nilambur. The body surfaced in the pond on Fbruary 9, and was identified by Radha’s relatives the next day.
Although the police nabbed the accused within days, protests from the CPI(M) and its subsidiaries forced the government to shift the investigation from IG (Thrissur) S. Gopinath to Additional Director General of Police B. Sandhya. As many as 108 of the 245 witnesses testified before the court.
CPI(M) State secretary Pinarayi Vijayan, at a reception given to his Save Kerala March at Nilambur on February 21, 2014, had raised a finger of suspicion at Mr. Aryadan.
