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Kerala court awards death sentence to 15 PFI members in BJP leader’s murder case
All the 15 accused in the case, who were members of the now-banned extremist outfit Popular Front of India and its political arm Social Democratic Party of India, were convicted by the court on January 20
A Kerala court on Tuesday awarded death sentence to 15 members of the Popular Front of India (PFI) in the 2021 murder case of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s OBC leader Ranjith Sreenivasan.
All the 15 accused in the case, who were members of the now-banned extremist outfit Popular Front of India (PFI) and its political arm Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI), were convicted by the court on January 20.
The sentence was pronounced by Mavelikkara additional district judge V G Sreedevi.
The prosecution had sought the maximum sentence for the convicts, saying that they were a “trained killer squad” and the cruel and diabolical manner in which the victim was killed in front of his mother, infant, and wife brings it within the ambit of the “rarest of the rare” crimes.
The prosecution said the accused men were found guilty of their involvement in the murder of Sreenivasan, who was the state secretary of the BJP OBC Morcha.
The convicts were identified as Naisam, Ajmal, Anoop, Mohammad Aslam, Salam, Saffaruddin, Abdul Kalam, Manshad, Jaseeb Raja, Navas, Sameer, Nazir, Zakir Hussain, Shaji and Shernas Ashraf.
Sreenivasan, 40, was hacked to death at his home at Vellakinar in Alappuzha town by a 12-member gang with sharp weapons on the morning of December 19, 2021. Police have said that the BJP leader’s mother, wife, and younger daughter were witnesses to the brutal crime. Sreenivasan’s killing was seen as a retaliation for the murder of SDPI state secretary KS Shan on the previous day by alleged Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) members in the Alappuzha district. The trial in that case is still going on.
Special public prosecutor Prathap G Padickal said that all the accused have been convicted under Section 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) among other offences including criminal conspiracy and criminal trespass.
“The court has found that the prosecution was able to undoubtedly prove all the offences against the accused in the chargesheet. The accused number one to eight who barged into Ranjith’s house and hacked him to death have been found guilty of murder u/s (under section) 302 of IPC. Similarly, accused 9 to 12 who stood outside the house and provided help to accused 1 to 8 have been found guilty of murder with the help of Section 149 of IPC (unlawful assembly). Accused 13 to 15 were convicted for criminal conspiracy as well as murder,” said Padickal.
Other offences including physically assaulting Ranjith’s mother and sister during the crime, and damaging household items have also been proved, he said.
“The prosecution argued that this is a rarest of the rare case as Sreenivasan was brutally attacked in front of his elderly mother and wife. There were over 56 cuts on his body. So, all the accused deserve the maximum punishment u/s 302 which can be imprisonment for life or the death sentence,” the special public prosecutor said.
A total of 156 witnesses testified during the trial and the prosecution produced over 1,000 documents and 100 material objects in the court.
(PTI inputs)
