The Alappuzha court in Kerala handed over a death sentence to all the 15 PFI activists, who were convicted of murdering of RSS activist Ranjith Sreenivasan.
On December 19, 2021, the BJP OBC Morcha state secretary, was brutally attacked and allegedly killed in his home, in front of his family by PFI activists.
The accused – Naisam, Ajmal, Anoop, Mohammed Aslam, Abdul Kalam alias Salam, Saffaruddin, Manshad, Jaseeb Raja, Navas, Sameer, Nazir, Zakir Hussain, Shaji Poovathungal, and Shernas Ashraf were affiliated with the now-banned Popular Front of India (PFI) and its political wing, the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI).
The BJP leader’s murder occurred just hours after SDPI leader K S Shan was killed by a gang on the night of December 18 while he was returning home in Alappuzha.
The sentence was pronounced by Mavelikkara Additional District judge V G Sreedevi.
The prosecution had sought the maximum sentence for the convicts, saying that they were a “trained killer squad” and the cruel and diabolical manner in which the victim was killed in front of his mother, infant, and wife brings it within the ambit of the “rarest of the rarest” of crimes. The court also made the convicts undergo a mental stability test at the Government Medical College in Alappuzha.
The first eight accused, who were directly involved in the heinous act were found guilty under Sections 302 (murder), 149 (unlawful assembly), 449 (house trespass to commit offense punishable with death), 506 (criminal intimidation), and 341 (wrongful restraint) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
The other set of accused, who stood guard outside the BJP’s leader’s house with deadly weapons when the assailants committed the crime, were convicted under Sections 302 r/w 149 and 447 (criminal trespass) of the IPC.
Howver, the key conspirators, Zakir, Shaji and Shernas were found guilty of criminal conspiracy and murder under IPC Sections 120 B and 302, respectively.
The prosecution case is that Ranjeet, the State secretary of BJP’s OBC Morcha and a lawyer, was brutally hacked to death by the accused at his residence in Vellakinar, Alappuzha municipality, after barging into his house on the morning of December 19, 2021.
The BJP leader’s murder was regarded as an act of retaliation, which was carried out in response to the murder of SDPI’s State secretary K S Shan at Mannancherry’s Kuppezham Junction in Kerala, just the night before.
Meanwhile, the trial in the Shan murder case will commence on February 2. Despite the charge sheet being filed by police on March 16, 2022, the trial faced delays in appointing special prosecutor. The first two appointees for the case withdrew for various reasons, following which Advocate P P Haris was appointed to the post last week.
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