The Congress on Thursday sought to cast the dawn arrest and subsequent incarceration of State Youth Congress president Rahul Mamkootathil on Tuesday as the latest example of the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government’s contempt for the Opposition and intolerance to democratic dissent.
Even as a district court here in Thiruvananthapuram deferred the hearing on Mr. Mamkootathil’s bail plea, Congress and CPI(M) forcefully disagreed over whether the YC leader had furnished a fabricated medical examination report to dodge judicial remand.
CPI(M) State secretary M.V. Govindan provoked the war of words by stating that the court found no merit in Mr. Mamkootathil’s claim that he was not healthy enough to endure judicial remand. He said the magistrate ordered a medical examination by a team of government doctors who submitted that Mr. Mamkootathil was healthy and suffered no serious ailment. The court subsequently remanded him in judicial custody till January 22.
