CPM candidate meets TP murder case convict

Well after the completion of Lok Sabha polling in the state, Vadakara CPM candidate A N Shamseer on Monday met one of the convicts sentenced to life term in the T P Chandrasekharan murder case at Kannur Central Prison.

Shamseer met P K Kunjananthan, a local CPM leader who is among 11 people awarded life imprisonment in the case, along with DYFI activists.

Party state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan, too, met Kunjananthan on Saturday. Earlier, CPM leaders met the convicts lodged in the prison, even before the verdict in the case came out in January. The meeting comes against a backdrop of fresh allegations against the party and its role in the murder of Chandrasekharan, who was a former CPM leader and founder of the breakaway Revolutionary Marxist Party (RMP).

Ahead of the April 10 Lok Sabha polls in Kerala, the RMP alleged that Shamseer was in touch with one member of the seven-man gang of assailants who hacked Chandrasekharan to death in May, 2012.

The CPM conducted its own investigation into the murder case – that three of its members were convicted for – and found only one of them, K C Ramachandran, as having links with the controversial killing. Ramachandran was later expelled from the party.

Shamseer, meanwhile, challenged the RMP on its claims and said the charges were baseless. P Jayarajan, Kannur district secretary of the CPM, said the RMP was merely a voice of the ruling Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) and that party leaders would continue to meet Kunjananthan as long as he remained a member.