Kochi: On 6 June 2015, at the Kolavallur police station premises near Panoor in Kannur, two Communist Party of India (Marxist) cadres were reported killed while making bombs. The deceased were identified as Subeesh (29) and Shaiju (32). The CPI(M) state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, however, declared that they weren’t associated with the party.
It didn’t go unnoticed that their bodies were received by CPI(M) Kannur district secretary P. Jayarajan and they were laid to rest at the party’s East Chettakandy burial ground.
Exactly a year since, the CPI(M) marked 6 June as martyrs’ day for the victims — hailing them for having laid down their lives in “resistance” against the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The region has a history of cadres of the two outfits attacking each other.
A memorial was built commemorating the “martyrs”, and every year, tall leaders of the CPI(M), including K.K. Shailaja, the party’s Lok Sabha candidate in Vadakara this year, attend the event to acknowledge the “sacrifice” in their speeches.
Cut to 2024. In the wee hours on 5 April, bombs went off at Muliyathode (incidentally, within a three-mile radius of the locality of the blasts in 2015), in Panoor, which was relayed to Ramjith P.G, the Panoor sub-inspector of police, around 1.15 am. Five people were injured in the incident, of which one died at the hospital.
The FIR, a copy of which is with ThePrint, records the time of the explosion as 12.30 am. Although the police station is only about a mile from the site, the FIR says the police came to know about the incident from the Kuthuparamba Hospital, where the injured sought treatment, and it was only around 4 am that a team reached the site of the explosion.
By morning, one person, Sherin was already reported dead and another, Vineesh, son of CPI(M) cardholder Nanu, had lost both his palms in the explosion and was shifted to a leading private hospital in Kozhikode.
According to the remand report of the accused, the alleged motive for making bombs that accidentally exploded in Panoor was to stir up trouble ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.
As the poll campaign intensifies in Vadakara, where CPI(M)’s K.K. Shailaja is locked in a tight contest with Congress’s Shafi Parambil, the latter has made it a point to rake up CPI(M)’s history of political violence. The news of the explosion and death that was tucked away in small newspaper columns on 6 April, gradually developed into a big story by the next morning, when the police registered arrests. Members of Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) — the CPI(M) youth wing — were allegedly involved in the incident.
Kerala news channels referred to an intelligence report on bomb-making in the Panoor area that Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had allegedly ignored, although the CM stated that no such report existed.
An Intelligence Bureau (IB) officer told ThePrint on condition of anonymity that the state special branch (SSB) “election reports on law and order might have some mention of it, but then it is fairly routine for Kannur”.
Notably, crude bombs hurled by CPI (M) cadres following the declaration of results of the 2021 assembly elections caused the loss of life of a young Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) activist in the same area.
CPI(M) version & DYFI link
On 7 April, M.V. Govindan, CPI(M) state secretary, declared that the party had nothing to do with the Muliyathode case. Local leaders maintained that the injured, Vineesh, was ousted from the CPI(M) earlier.
However, cellphone visuals showed CPI(M) area committee members K.K. Sudheer Kumar, N. Anil Kumar and local committee member A. Ashokan visiting the home of the deceased, Sherin. While the party’s Panoor area secretary K.E. Kunhabdulla said these leaders should have been more vigilant, senior leaders of the CPI(M) argued that it was only natural for politicians to visit bereaved families in their locality.
Speaking to ThePrint on 7 April, Kunhabdulla said, “The CPI(M) has nothing to do with the bomb-making. Do you think we would condone such activity during election time?”
By 8 April, more arrests were recorded, including that of P.V. Amal Babu, Midhun Lal, Athul, Sayooj, Akshay and Shijal, who are associated with the CPI(M)’s youth wing.
According to the Facebook pages of the DYFI, Shijal is unit secretary of Kunnothuparamba; Amal Babu is unit secretary of Meethale Kunnothuparamba; Athul is DYFI joint secretary of the same unit and Sayooj is DYFI unit secretary of Kadungampoyil.
At this point, the CPI(M) version changed slightly.
On 8 April, M.V. Govindan addressed the press and said DYFI comrades had only reached the location after hearing about the explosion, and merely volunteered to take the injured to the hospital.
CM Vijayan, too, invoked “humanitarian grounds” to explain the involvement of party cadres. DYFI state secretary V.K. Sanoj — who incidentally hails from Kannur — claimed ignorance about the alleged involvement of DYFI cadres in the making of the crude bombs.
P. Hareendran, CPI(M) district secretariat member and the senior-most leader hailing from Panoor, said the same thing to ThePrint on 8 April: “To our knowledge, the DYFI cadres were there only to provide relief.”
When asked why they tried to escape and had to be rounded up by the police, he said, “That’s a good question but I guess they got scared and felt they would be implicated.”
Hareendran was on the list of leaders who made commemorative speeches for the “martyrs” from 2015. Asked about this, he told ThePrint that the two cases weren’t comparable, as back then, the CPI(M) and the RSS were at daggers drawn in these regions.
All this is happening in the backdrop of the Lok Sabha elections scheduled for 26 April in Vadakara, where Shailaja is contesting against Congress’s Shafi Parambil. Although Panoor is in Kannur district, it is part of the Kuthuparamba assembly constituency — one of the two segments from Kannur in the Vadakara Lok Sabha constituency.
Ever since Parambil entered the fray as a last-minute replacement for incumbent K. Muraleedharan, he has made it a point to rake up CPI(M)’s history of political violence. He had begun his campaign from the memorial of T.P. Chandrasekharan, and the Panoor blasts have given him more talking points.
Parambil was quick to hold a “peace march” in Panoor on 7 April in the company of K.K. Rema, which drew a large crowd. The Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) also held a protest campaign highlighting the Panoor blasts at 62 centres across Vadakara on 8 April.
This has also put Shailaja on the defensive, especially after her initial statement that raking up the background of those involved in the Panoor case wasn’t necessary since youngsters from any background could go astray.
Incidentally, the RSS and its political wing, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), have pockets of influence in the area. For added context, before July 2016 — when spiritual leader ‘Sri M’ brokered a truce between the CPI (M) and the RSS at the highest level — clashes between workers of the two groups were common in these areas.
Link to the TP case
The brutal hacking to death of rebel Marxist leader T.P. Chandrasekharan in 2012 continues to haunt the CPI (M) to this day.
According to Rijil Makutty, a youth Congress leader from Kannur, those rounded up in the Muliyathode case have links to T.K. Sajith, convicted for murder in the T.P. case.
K.K. Rema, widow of Chandrasekharan, now an MLA from the adjoining Vadakara assembly constituency, has said that Shijal — purported to be the “mastermind” of the bomb-making in Muliyathode — manages the crusher unit owned by CPI(M) leader Geothi Babu, who was convicted by the Kerala High Court in the T.P. murder case in February.
Rema made another startling allegation: Geothi Babu was not undergoing imprisonment but serving his time at the Pariyaram Medical College on the pretext of having to undergo regular dialysis.
Speaking to ThePrint, Hareendran said that he could not confirm this, but he did admit to the fact that Amal Babu, the DYFI unit secretary of Meethale Kunnothuparamba arrested in the Muliyathode case, is the nephew of Geothi Babu.
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Motive for bomb-making
From the beginning, police officers in charge of the case have remained tight-lipped. There have been no official briefings, possibly as a result of orders from above. ThePrint reached Kolavallur Station House Officer (SHO) Sumith Kumar to find out why nobody from the station managed to reach the site of the explosion despite being located close to the area, but he didn’t offer a response and instead, directed ThePrint to the Panoor SHO.
ThePrint spoke to the Panoor SHO to get clues into the motive for the bomb-making. He referred to a “gang war between two groups harking back to 8 March at a temple festival in the area”, but quickly added that only the investigating officer, Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) K.V. Venugopal, could speak with authority on this.
Venugopal referred to the internecine gang war between two groups at Kaivelikkal Kuzhimbil temple as the motive for the bomb-making.
This is contradicted by the remand report of P.V. Amal Babu and Sayooj, which says “the bombs were meant to be used against political opponents and to create trouble in the runup to the Lok Sabha polls”, as reported by Malayala Manorama.
An ‘unrelated’ incident
In what would ostensibly be an unrelated case, 7 April saw clashes between the cadres of CPI(M) and UDF-ally Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) in the same area. The incident pertained to the murder of IUML cadre Mansoor in 2021, allegedly by CPI(M) cadres, following the declaration of the results in the assembly polls.
Curiously, the attack on Mansoor’s house by CPI (M) cadres in 2021 began with the “hurling of crude bombs”.
On what was the second anniversary of Mansoor’s death, the clashes allegedly took place owing to Marxist workers visiting the slain IUML leader’s home seeking votes for K.K. Shailaja.
M.K. Muneer of the IUML alleged that these bombs were being made to target the IUML and Congress cadres and the Leader of Opposition V.D. Satheesan, too, backed it up.
The police remand report against the sixth and seventh accused, P.V. Amal Babu and C. Sayooj, only buttresses the UDF’s imputation.
The only question that remains is, whether the bomb-making was with the knowledge of the higher-ups in the CPI(M).
(Edited by Richa Mishra)
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