The Kerala police on Sunday continued its mass round-ups of persons suspected to be responsible for the spree of violence that engulfed the State for nearly four days after two young women worshipped at the Sabarimala temple early Wednesday.
Officers said the State was mostly peaceful on Sunday, but certain pockets of disquiet remained. In Thalassery, BJP and CPI(M) workers targeted each other's homes in violation of a peace agreement brokered by the District Collector.
The police have so far arrested 5,397 persons, an overwhelming number of them Bharatiya Janata Party and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) workers.
The police produced 731 persons in court and remanded them in judicial custody.
The charges against them included the attack on police officers, destruction of public property, illegal use of explosives, arson and wilful rioting.
The rest arrested on lesser charges of unlawful assembly and violation of curfew were let off on bail from station houses. So far, the police have registered 1,771 cases in connection with Sabarimala-related violence.
Senior officers said they were pursuing a “broken windows” policing strategy.
The approach entailed the identification and detention of persons involved in even very minor offences to interdict the re-occurrence of major crimes such as the organised rioting the State witnessed after the Sabarimala issue erupted again last week.
The BJP has slammed the police strategy stating that it unfairly targeted those politically opposed to the CPI(M). The government has used the police to burden Ayyappa devotees with criminal cases, which will make it harder for them to procure passports and get security clearance for jobs.
A senior officer said the police had acted only on the basis of evidence. It had used conventional methods for evidence collection and artificial intelligence-powered software programme to single out and identify habitual rioters caught on surveillance cameras across the State.
At Perambra in Kozhikode, the police said they arrested a CPI(M) branch secretary on the charge of attacking the place of worship of a minority community in a bid to foment communal trouble and create enmity between communities.
They have named 20 CPI(M) workers as accused in the case registered under Section 153 (a) of the IPC. At Attappady and Pattambi in Palakkad, the police arrested seven CPI(M) workers in connection with the attacks on the house of BJP workers. The police have arraigned scores of CPI(M) workers as accused in cases relating to the attack on BJP workers, their homes and party offices.
The continuing use of crude explosives has prompted an intense crackdown on the illegal sale of explosives. Officers said in Kannur, both the BJP and CPI(M) had used lethal thrown-down type country bombs encased in steel casings to attack the houses of party leaders. In other places, the rioters had mostly used bangers, which were relatively non-lethal and contained no explosives.
