CBI questions Kerala CPI-M Leader in RSS Man’s Murder

Thiruvananthapuram, June 2 (IANS): Senior CPI-M leader P. Jayarajan was on Tuesday questioned by the CBI for over four hours in connection with an RSS activist’s murder last year.

Emerging from the CBI office here after the questioning, Jayarajan, who is the Kannur district secretary of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) and a former legislator, said he was asked to appear before them to know about certain things connected with the case.

“The CBI superintendent of police asked me things in detail. All the questions that they asked me, I have answered. I have not been told anything if I have to appear before them again,” he said.

RSS activist K.T. Manoj, one of the people accused of making an unsuccessful bid on the life of Jayarajan in 1999, was attacked by a seven-member gang on September 1, 2014, in Kathirur near Kannur.

His assailants first threw a bomb on the RSS activist’s vehicle and later hacked him to death.

Kerala Police probed the case that was later handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to look into the conspiracy angle. So far, 19 people have been arraigned as accused.

The murder shook Kannur district, for long a hotbed of political murders on account of fierce rivalry between the CPI-M and the BJP-RSS combine.

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh went to the murdered activist’s home, and soon thereafter a green signal for the CBI probe was given on the Kerala government’s request.

This fresh summoning has come at a time when Jayarajan is already out on bail in a case relating to the February 20, 2012 murder of Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) activist Abdul Shukkoor.

Jayarajan secured bail in the case after remaining in Kannur jail for close to four weeks in August 2012.