The City Central police have opened investigation into a complaint by a member of the ‘Say No To Hartal’ action group Raju P. Nair that an assistant of North Kozhikode MLA A. Pradeep Kumar assaulted him on the hartal day. Mr. Nair said he was part of the group of activists against hartal trying to ferry stranded passengers at the Ernakulam South railway station when Mr. Kumar arrived at the station and was about to board a taxi. Mr. Nair claimed that he was assaulted by an assistant of the MLA as he was taking a video of the CPI(M) MLA boarding the taxi and asked him whether it was appropriate for the MLA to use a taxi while other passengers were stranded on account of the hartal. Mr. Kumar denied that his friend had assaulted Mr. Nair. He said that his friend only tried to intervene while the anti-hartal activist was speaking to him. The MLA said he had reached Kochi on his way to Thiruvananthap- uram to call on a friend who had lost his father recently.
He said he had asked his friend to arrange a two-wheeler as it was a hartal day, but the friend reached the railway station with a four-wheeler. He said he later asked his friend to arrange a two-wheeler to reach his friend’s house at Kadavanthara.
Earlier in the day, Mr. Nair had also stopped CPI leader Pannian Ravindran, who arrived at the railway station, to ask him about the relevance of hartal.
