In a disclosure which may have far reaching effects on Kerala politics besides causing a great embarrassment to the Communist Party of India (Marxist), an old video footage purportedly showing a party worker talking about “beheading” slain party rebel T P Chandrasekharan has surfaced.
The video clipping shows the then CPM local committee secretary at Onjiyam, Gopalakrishnan, saying “Chandrasekharan will be beheaded” if he continues to create trouble for the party workers in the area.
The video containing the purported speech, made by the CPM leader on February 5, 2010 months after Chandrasekharan left the party and floated Revolutionary Marxist Party (RMP), was aired by Malayalam TV channels on Monday.
The speech made on the premises of a village temple, where a festival was going on, referred to the tension between CPM and RMP workers in the area.
“Now none of our party workers has been hurt. But if anyone suffers a scratch, we will behead Chandrasekharan. Our party in Onjiyam is capable of doing that,” the local leader is purportedly seen saying in the video.
Reacting to the video footage, Chandrasekharan’s widow Rema told a TV channel “It is based on evidence like this that we have been saying that Chandrasekharan’s murder was plotted by CPI(M). More such evidence substantiating our charge will surface in the coming days.”
RMP leader N Venu claimed Chandrasekharan had been continuously harassed by CPM ever since he left the party in 2008. The CPM’s Onjiyam unit had often provocated Chandrashekharan to eliminate him, he added.
Asked about Gopalakrishnan’s controversial speech, a senior CPM functionary from Onjiayam area said, “We see this as another instance of the larger conspiracy by the CPM’s enemies to mar its image.”
He accused the media of projecting “a few words” while blacking out other context in which the speech was made.
He said there were clashes and a bomb attack on a party activist in the area at that time and the local leader who made the speech only used certain “figurative expressions”.“The party has already made it clear that physical elimination of rivals is not its policy,” he said.