The Mavelikara Additional District Sessions Court-I on January 30 awarded the death penalty to 14 of the 15 convicts in the murder of the BJP’s Kerala leader Ranjith Sreenivas.
Sreenivas, who was a lawyer and the State secretary of the BJP’s front for Other Backward Classes (OBCs), was brutally hacked to death at his house at Vellakinar in Alappuzha municipality on the morning of December 19, 2021. He was murdered in front of his mother, wife, and daughter. Sreenivas’ family welcomed the verdict.
The convicts, hailing from various parts of Alappuzha, belong to the now proscribed Popular Front of India (PFI) and its political arm, the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI).
‘Rarest of rare cases’
Observing that the murder fell under the category of the rarest of rare cases, Judge Sreedevi V.G. directed that the 14 convicts — Naisam, Ajmal, Anoop, Mohammed Aslam, Abdul Kalam alias Salam, Abdul Kalam, Saffaruddin, Manshad, Jaseeb Raja, Sameer, Nazir, Zakir Hussain, Shaji Poovathungal, and Shernas Ashraf — be hanged by the neck till their death. The court also imposed a ₹1 lakh fine on all of them.
Though the court has found Navas, the tenth accused, guilty of the offences charged against him, it did not pronounce his sentence as he is undergoing medical treatment at a hospital. The court will award him punishment at a later date.
Additional penalties
All 15 accused in the case were found guilty by the court on January 20, under Section 302 (murder) and various other provisions of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). Special Public Prosecutor Prathap G. Padickkal said that the accused had been found guilty on a total of 15 counts. Besides the death penalty, accused numbers one to eight, who took part in the actual killing, have also been sentenced to imprisonment for life and to undergo rigorous imprisonment for seven years.
The court also awarded jail terms of varying degrees to the other convicts in the case, including accused numbers nine, 11 and 12, who stood guard outside the BJP’s leader’s house with deadly weapons while the assailants committed the murder. Zakir (13th accused), Shaji (14th accused), and Shernas (15th accused), the key conspirators in the case, were also found guilty under Sections 120B (criminal conspiracy) r/w and 302 of the IPC. The sentences shall run concurrently.
The court directed a compensation payment of ₹6 lakh to Sreenivas’ family if the fine amount was realised from the convicts.
Series of killings
According to investigators, Sreenivas’ killing was a retaliatory strike to avenge the previous night’s murder of the SDPI’s State secretary K.S. Shan at Kuppezham Junction at Mannancherry, Alappuzha, allegedly by Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) activists. The trigger for the murder of Shan was the killing of RSS worker Nandukrishna by SDPI men at Vayalar in Alappuzha on February 24, 2021. The high-profile communally tinged political killings had led to fears of a possible communal flare-up in Kerala.
The Sreenivas murder case was investigated by a special team led by Alappuzha Deputy Superintendent of Police N.R. Jayaraj. Besides Mr. Padickkal, Sreedevi Prathap, Shilpa Sivan, and Hareesh Kattoor represented the prosecution.
