RSS, CPM violence resurfaces in Kerala

Violence involving CPM and BJP-RSS activists resurfaced in Kerala late on Thursday night, injuring six people in two separate incidents, in Kozhikode and Palakkad.

At 8.30 pm on Thursday, two unidentified men on motorbikes hurled a crude bomb near a RSS office in Kallachi near Nadapuram in Kozhikode district, leaving four BJP activists — T P Babu, Bineesh, Suni and Sudhir — injured.

An hour later, in a suspected retaliatory attack, a CPM office in Vishnumangalam was set on fire. The police said there were no leads to the suspects but confirmed the political nature of the attacks.

“It has to be noted that the attacks happened on the day when an inflammatory statement was made (in Ujjain by RSS leader Kundan Chandrawat, announcing a Rs one crore bounty on the head of Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan)”, a police official in Nadapuram told DH.

Tension between the two camps, however, has been prevailing in the area since Wednesday. In Elappully in Palakkad district, two activists of the CPM-affiliated Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) — Ratheesh and Yusuf— were injured in attacks by suspected RSS-BJP workers.

Reports said the attacks were part of ongoing tension between the two political camps that had started during a temple festival in the area. Chandrawat’s statement was criticised across political circles in Kerala and the state BJP also distanced itself from the RSS leader’s call for violence. The state CPM sought to know from Prime Minister Narendra Modi his take on the RSS leader’s statement.