Senior Kerala leader embarrasses CPI-M again

After putting the Communist Party of India - Marxist in Kerala in the dock with his controversial comment about it eliminating political foes in the past, party leader M M Mani has once again purportedly made a similar claim, embarrassing the party further.

Addressing a meeting, organised by the CPI-M at Adimali Pathamile in Idukki district on Friday evening, Mani said the party was responsible for the murder of a local leader of the Congress's trade union wing INTUC some years ago.

The audio of the speech purportedly made by Mani was broadcast by Malayalam television channels on Saturday.

"Our people were involved in the killing," Mani said while referring to the murder of an INTUC leader which was carried out as a retaliatory act for killing a pro-CPI-M CITU leader.

Though the case had been investigated and the accused punished, now there were moves to implicate him by reviving it, he said.

Mani also took at a dig at Communist Party of India state secretary Panniayan Raveendran, saying the left ally had acted like a betrayer in time of the CPI-M's distress.

Mani then went on to allude to certain episodes of folklore of north Kerala to suggest that despite being an ally, CPI had sought to deceive CPI-M when it was in trouble.

Mani was removed as CPI-M's Idukki district secretary a couple of months ago and later dropped from the state committee for his speech at Thodupuzha, where he stated that the party had physically eliminated its foes in the area in the 1980s.

Based on Mani's "revelation", police ordered a fresh probe in these cases and criminal charges were framed against Mani and some other CPI-M leaders in Idukki district.

His speech could not have come at a worse time for the CPI-M, which is grappling with the fallout of the murder of Marxist rebel and Revolutionary Marxist Party leader T P Chandrasekharan in May this year, with several of its leaders arrested in connection with the case.