The Special Investigation Team (SIT), probing CPI(M) Idukki district secretary M.M. Mani's statement that the CPI(M) had systematically eliminated the party's adversaries according to a list prepared by it, has issued notice to him to appear before it.
Notices have been issued to Mr. Mani's residence and the CPI(M) Idukki district committee office asking the CPI(M) leader to appear for interrogation at Thodupuzha Deputy Superintendent of Police (Dy.SP) office at 11 a.m. on Wednesday.
The development comes amid media reports, stoutly denied by CPI(M) State secretary Pinarayi Vijayan, that Mr. Mani had gone into hiding following the police launching an investigation into the incidents that he had referred to in the course of his speech at Thodupuzha on May 26.
He had said that a list of 13 persons to be killed was prepared by the party in the early 1980s and out of them three were killed.
The SIT, formed immediately after Mr. Mani's sensational disclosures were beamed by TV channels, has already taken statements from some of the accused in the three murder cases mentioned by Mr. Mani. All the accused had been acquitted for want of sufficient evidence.
The team is learnt to have collected vital information from those questioned to prove that the evidence in these cases were tampered with during the trial stage.
The SIT has been focusing on the murders of Ancheri Baby, Mullanchira Mathai, and Muttukad Nanappan, all of them members of the Congress party.
Ancheri Baby was shot dead on November 13, 1982. It had been alleged that the gun produced in the court was found by forensic experts to be unusable, leading to the acquittal of the accused. Mullanchira Mathai was beaten to death on January 16, 1983, but lack of proper witnesses led to acquittal of 11 CPI(M) activists accused in the case. Muttukad Nanappan was stabbed to death on June 6, 1983, but the case did not stand due to lack of proper witnesses.
Fresh evidence
The SIT is also looking for fresh evidence on the murder of Balu, who was hacked to death while addressing a public meeting in 2004.
Mr. Mani had made himself scarce soon after his statement triggered heavy condemnation from far and wide, including from the CPI(M) Polit Bureau, which declared that appropriate action would be taken against him for having stated things that were not in keeping with the party's policy.
Over the past two days, the media has been speculating that he had been asked by the CPI(M) State leadership to remain underground to avert arrest before the Neyyattinkara Assembly by-election.
‘Mani still in Idukki'
However, the CPI(M) State secretary on Friday asserted that Mr. Mani was very much in Idukki and that he had spoken to him earlier in the day as also on Thursday.
