Vice-President Venkaiah Naidu yesterday urged politicians in Kerala to end violence and concentrate on development.
His appeal comes amid widespread protests in the state against the failure of the police to arrest the alleged killers of T H Shuhaib, 29, a Congress leader in Kannur, who was murdered last week.
Opposition parties say the ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist) carried out the brutal murder with the help of prisoners on parole. Police also had named the CPM in their first information report (FIR).
“Murders of rivals are no good. They will affect the social fabric. They will divert the attention,” Naidu said at a function in the northern city of Kozhikode yesterday.
“Progress is not possible without peace. Peace and progress go together. If there’s tension, there cannot be attention towards development. So I appeal to the people of Kerala that they should put a full stop to this.”
He also urged the people to isolate “the forces of violence so that they can strengthen the democratic process in this country.”
“The political workers should remember that they are not enemies. They are all Indian citizens,” he said.
“They might be in different parties, but they are working for the country in their own way.”
Meanwhile, M P Mohamed, the father of Shuhaib, who is a Gulf-returnee like his slain son, demanded that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) take over the case.
“We have lost faith in the state police. Five days have passed since the brutal murder took place, but they are not even bothered to contact us,” Mohamed said.
“In such incidents, the police usually record the statements of the family of the victim. It seems they are trying to shield the real culprits. Nobody in the government also called me or came here.”
Former state Congress Party president K Muraleedharan demanded intervention by Governor P Sathasivam to ensure a free and fair investigation so that political opponents are not eliminated this way anymore.
In a related development, the state president of the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI), A M Shamseer, also a CPM legislator, admitted to the party’s role in a 2012 mob lynching.
In February 2012, CPM workers caught Abdul Shukkoor, 21, a student leader of the Indian Union Muslim League, an ally of the Congress, took him to a nearby paddy field and killed him before scores of witnesses.
“Shukkoor’s was not a planned murder. It was a mob attack,” Shamseer told a television channel. “We have never justified it. Neither have we denied any party connection.”
The CPM has all along been denying any role in the killing, though the police had booked the party’s district secretary P Jayarajan and a legislator, T V Rajesh.
On a plea by his mother P C Athikka, the Kerala High Court last year handed over the investigation to the CBI, which is underway.
The CPM workers detained Shukkoor and four friends in a relative’s home for hours before killing him after a ‘kangaroo court’ proceedings during which they sent his photo for identification through MMS to an unidentified person.
They had accused the undergraduate student of being part of an IUML mob that blocked the vehicle of Jayarajan and Rajesh the previous day.
The local police on August 1, 2012, arrested Jayarajan and Rajesh on charges of not preventing the killing despite knowing of the conspiracy hatched by some local activists of the CPM, but the investigation was going at a slow pace.
Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu speaks at the platinum jubilee celebrations of Rouzathul Uloom Association in Kozhikode yesterday.
