Edited by Deepali Verma
Fifteen men have been sentenced to death for murder of BJP leader Ranjith Sreenivasan in Kerala. The brutal killing of Ranjith Sreenivasan took place in front of his family members in 2021 in what was described as a tit-for-tat murder. Police said that the 15 convicts hold affiliation with the Popular Front of India (PFI) which is a controversial Muslim group banned in 2022.
The men have the right to appeal against the sentences in a higher court. A sessions court in Kerala’s Alappuzha district had convicted the men on January 20.
After the announcement of the death penalty, Sreenivasan’s wife Lisha expressed that while their loss was “irreparable”, the verdict did come as a relief.
At his home, Sreenivasan was hacked to death in Alappuzha on December 19, 2021 in front of his mother, wife and daughter.
During the investigation, the Police revealed that eight of the 15 convicts were directly involved in the murder while the others were given the duty of guarding with weapons outside the house.
A section of the men were members of the PFI while the others had ties to its political unit, the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI). The BJP-led federal government banned PFI in 2022 for the course of five years for its alleged links with terror groups.
Sreenivasan’s murder took place just hours after the killing of KS Shan, an SDPI leader in Alappuzha. As per the investigation reports, Shan was murdered to avenge the killing of an activist from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological fountainhead of the Hindu nationalist BJP.
A police chargesheet filed after a few months of Shan’s murder named 21 people. Out of which, Police made successful arrests of five people for the murder who later got bail. Trial in the case is due to begin in the coming month.
The back-to-back murders of Sreenivasan and Shan has left shockwaves among the people of Kerala and has made national headlines.
