By Stephan Kayyar
Daijiworld Media Network—Kasargod (EP)
Kasargod, Oct 29: Police have arrested an accused in the murder of CPM activist Kumble Shantipalla resident P Murali (37). Three of the main accused are still absconding. Anantapura resident Sharath, Kudreppadi resident Dinesh alias Dinu, Bharath alias Bharath Raj and Mithun are suspected of being involved in the crime.
Mithun is the suspect nabbed by police and is being questioned. The police are interrogating him to find out if anybody else was involved in the crime. Police have information that the group had fled via the inside road to Kudreppadi after the crime. They have questioned seven people with regard to the incident.
P Murali
Though the police conducted search operations in several places, they had not been able to arrest the suspects. They had conducted raids in Kudreppadi after they got information that the suspects may be there. However, the suspects were not found there. It is suspected that they might have fled to Karnataka.
Police are confident that the suspects will be arrested soon. They have not been able to find the two bikes and deadly weapons used in the crime. Police have said that they will be able to identify the reason for the murder only after the arrest of main suspect Sharath. They are investigating to find out if there was a conspiracy and if more people were involved in the crime. The victim was killed near Seethangoli by a team of four people with deadly weapons on the evening of Monday October 27.
The team had ambushed the victim, who was traveling on a bike with his friend Manjunath to the wooden depot at Shantipalla, and killed him. Manjunath managed to escape.
'CPM activist murdered to settle scores' – police
Preliminary investigation by the district police into the killing of CPM activist from Shantipalla near Kumble, P Muralidhar alias Murali on Monday October 27 evening at Kumble, has come to the conclusion that he was slain by a gang of four. The police have found that a person whose father was slain a decade back, in which Murali had been accused, was one of the members of this gang.
Murali had been named as an accused in the murder case of Dayanand, an auto rickshaw driver at Kumble Kanchikatte. About ten years ago, Dayanand's auto rickshaw had been hired to a desolate spot where he was killed. In another case, a person working as a fishing worker named Vinod from Kozhikppady Kadappura had been eliminated 15 years back. In both cases, Murali had been accused, but he had been exonerated by the courts in both the cases.
Allegedly, Sharat, son of Dayanand, had made attempts earlier too along with his close confidantes, to eliminate Murali but had not succeeded. Murali was facing threat from this gang, and had escaped a murder attempt last year by a whisker. Murali was active in Centre of Indian Trade Unions, Democratic Youth Federation of India and CPM. After working as headload worker and in a saw mill, he had turned a middleman for timber trade. On Monday evening, he had been invited over cell phone to visit a place in the guise of discussing a timber trade proposal. When he was moving in his motor bike with a friend named Manjunath to the suggested spot, a gang which approached him from the opposite direction in two motor bikes hit him in the chest and forehead with sharp weapons before fleeing. While Murali bled to death instantly, Manjunath escaped to safety.
All the four accused are at large. They are hiding from the investigation agencies, and policemen led by district superintendent of police, deputy superintendent of police, Kumble police circle inspector and sub-inspector, have been working tirelessly to nab the culprits.
Till some years ago, tussle used to occur between workers of BJP activists and CPM often, culminating in murders. Of late, these incidents had become rare. The above politically sensitive murder has given rise to fresh concerns in the minds of the citizens of the district about the possibility of the practice murder for political vengeance rising its ugly head again in the district.