Kerala Police likely to invoke UAPA

The Kerala Police probing the gruesome murder of Abhimanyu (20), an activist of pro-CPI(M) student outfit SFI, at Kochi’s Maharaja’s College are likely to invoke provisions of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) in the case considering the extremist nature of the crime.

The NIA has reportedly started examining possible extremist links of the incident even as a probe is on to find out whether any of those accused in the hand-chopping case of 2010 had any involvement in the killing of Abhimanyu, a second-year degree student of Maharaja’s College. The police have identified the person who had stabbed Abhimanyu to death.

The SFI activist, a native of Vattavada village in Idukki district, was stabbed to death allegedly by workers of Islamist outfit Popular Front of India (PFI), its political wing Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI) and student outfit Campus Front of India in a clash over sticking posters on the college campus at Sunday midnight.

According to eyewitnesses, a gang of Islamists had unleashed terror on a group of SFI activists at midnight last Sunday following a dispute with Campus Front workers over poster-sticking. As per the FIR, only one among the gang members was a student of the college and the rest of them were PFI-SDPI workers from outside.

The police have named 15 PFI-SDPI-Campus Front workers as accused in the case and they have already arrested three of them. They took four more SDPI workers, including persons who had directly participated in the crime, into custody on Thursday while nearly 150 SDPI-PFI workers were detained in various districts even as raids continued at offices of the outfits.

According to police sources, the man who stabbed Abhimanyu in the chest causing instant death was one Muhammad, who is not a student of the college. They said there was another Muhammad, a Campus Front activist and a student of the college, in the gang that had attacked the SFI workers, and this had caused some confusion in identifying the actual killer.

On Thursday, State police chief Loknath Behera, who confirmed that the gang had killed Abhimanyu as per a conspiracy, told newsmen in Kochi that a decision on invoking provisions of UAPA against the accused would be taken after seeking legal opinion. He held discussions with the State Director General of Prosecutions at the High Court about this on Thursday afternoon.

“There is no doubt. There was a conspiracy,” he said even as Abhimanyu’s father Manoharan and other relatives expressed the same opinion in their village, Vattavada. “Abhimanyu was here on Sunday. Within just one hour, he had received several phone calls asking him to rush to Kochi. It was strange,” said a relative.

An inquiry is on to find out whether any of the PFI-SDPI activists accused in the case of chopping off of the right hand of TJ Joseph, a former college professor, in Muvattupuzha on July 4, 2010 for allegedly blaspheming Prophet Muhammad in a question paper he had prepared for his students had any role in the killing of Abhimanyu.

The inquiry is based on the similarity seen in the ways in which the two crimes were committed. Prof Joseph’s hand was chopped off in an attack with lightning speed and accuracy and a similar method was seen in the Kochi incident also. That Abhimanyu was killed on July 1, three days before the eighth anniversary of the attack on the professor, is supporting the suspicion.

Meanwhile, the Kochi unit of the National Investigation Agency has reportedly started examining whether the incident in Kochi had any extremist connections. According to sources, the agency had collected information from the State police regarding the incident at Maharaja’s College.