BJP Leader Ranjith Sreenivasan Murder: Death Penalty To 15 PFI Workers (image: twitter.com/MajorPoonia/)
A Kerala court on Tuesday ordered death penalty to 15 accused involved in the 2021 murder case of BJP leader Ranjith Sreenivasan. All the 15 were part of the now-banned Popular Front of India (PFI). The death penalty was announced by Mavelikkara Additional District Session Court-I.
The prosecution has asked for maximum sentence for the convicts, claiming that they were a “trainer killer squad” and the cruel and diabolical manner in which the victim was killed in front of his mother, minor daughter, and wife comes under the “rarest of the rarest” of crimes.
Ranjith Sreenivasan, 45, the BJP OBC Morcha state secretary, was ruthlessly attacked and murdered in his home on December 19, 2021 in front of his family by activists associated with PFI and Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI).
On January 20, the court has found that among the 15 people accused in the murder case, one to eight were directly involved in the case. Besides, it has also found that accused number nine to 12, are guilty of murder because, they along with those directly linked in the crime, these four came to the site armed with deadly weapons. Their aim was to resist Sreenivasan from escaping and stop anyone entering the house after hearing his screams.
The Mavelikkara Additional Sessions Judge, VG Sreedevi, therefore, had acknowledged the prosecution”s argument that they were also accountable for the common offence of murder under IPC Section 149 (every member of unlawful assembly guilty of offence committed in prosecution of common object).
The court has also sentenced for murder three others, i.e., accused number 13 to 15, who had devised the conspiracy to kill Ranjith Sreenivasan.
Declaring death sentences to so many convicts all at once is for the first time in the state.
All the 15 convicts are from Alappuzha and they are identified as Naisam, Ajmal, Anoop, Mohammed Aslam, Abdul Kalam (Salam), Abdul Kalam, Safaruddin, Manshad, Jaseeb Raja, Navaz, Sameer, Naseer, Zakir Hussain, Shaji (Poovathil Shaji), and Shernaz Ashraf.
The prosecution claimed that Ranjith”s killing was an act of retaliation in response to the murder of SDPI’s state secretary, KS Shan, the night before at Mannancherry’s Kuppezham Junction in Kerala.
(With inputs from Hindustan Times)
