STATE OF PLAY
After a humiliating defeat last May in his home turf, the Poonjar Assembly segment, from where he had won seven times before, Kerala Janapaksham (Secular) leader P.C. George had been out of political action for some time. Now he is back in the political limelight, but for all the wrong reasons.
Last week, he was remanded to judicial custody after a first-class magistrate’s court in Thiruvananthapuram cancelled his bail in a case related to a communally charged hate speech he delivered at the Hindu Maha Sammelan on April 30 this year. Previously, the court had granted him bail on the same day he was arrested from his residence at Erattupetta on May 1. Bail was granted on the condition that he would not make such communally-loaded comments in public. But 10 days after he was out on bail, Mr. George repeated the unsavoury remarks he had made against the Muslim community, particularly on “love jihad” and “population excess”, at a temple function at Vennala in Kochi.
