Youth Congress activist held for attack on Kerala CPM office

A Youth Congress activist was arrested on Thursday, in connection with the attack on Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s Kerala headquarters at AKG Centre in Thiruvananthapuram two months ago.

The delay in arresting the accused had been a cause of embarrassment to the ruling CPM. The arrest of Youth Congress activist V Jithin has come as a huge relief for the CPM-led Left Democratic Front.

However, the Congress alleged that the evidence against Jithin was fabricated, as the ruling CPM was quite rattled by the support being received by Rahul Gandhi and the Bharat Jodo Yatra that he has been doing through the state.

Congress leader K Sudhakaran accused the police of fabricating evidence. According to Sudhakaran, the police could have even given chocolates that cause hallucination to Jithin to manipulate his statement.

The attack on AKG Centre took place on June 30, hardly a week after the attack on Rahul Gandhi’s office in Wayanad by CPM’s student workers. Even though the police received CCTV footage of the accused, they could not trace it to the person, even as scores of suspected persons were questioned. Hence Congress was alleging that the attack was staged by CPM itself.

The police said Jithin was nabbed with the help of scientific evidence such as the T-shirt and shoes he was wearing at the time of the incident, his mobile phone call records, as well as his car that was seen in the CCTV footage.

But the police were yet to identify the two-wheeler used by the accused.