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Koothuparampu firing: 'Cat is finally out of the bag,' says Raghavan

D Jose in Thiruvananthapuram

The Kerala High Court order for a Central Bureau of Investigation inquiry into the murder case filed against former minister M V Raghavan and 16 government officials in connection with the Koothuparampu police firing incident has come as a big jolt to the Marxist-led government in Kerala and as a severe embarrassment to Governor Sukhdev Singh Kang, who examined the case.

In a bid to hide its embarrassment, the government has announced its decision to appeal against the single-bench judgement on Monday without even waiting for the details. The decision was taken at a high-level meeting attended by Chief Minister E K Nayanar, Advocate General M K Damodaran and senior officials.

The authorities appeared highly uncomfortable with the judgement since it is quite unprecedented for a court to order reinvestigation of a case, in which the governor has given the sanction to prosecute the accused. Governor Sukhdev Singh Kang, a former Supreme Court judge himself, had examined the case before ordering the prosecution of Raghavan, who was a minister in the previous Congress-led United Democratic Front government headed by K Karunakaran.

The police firing resulting in the death of five Communist Party of India-Marxist activists had taken place at a function Raghavan attended at Koothuparampu in Kannur district in 1992 in his capacity as minister for cooperation. The murder case against Raghavan, a superintendent of police, a magistrate and 14 police constables was registered after the Left Democratic Front government came to power on the basis of the report of a judicial commission.

Justice J B Koshy of the high court observed that it was the duty of the government to protect the morale of the public servants and the police force, who have to deal with difficult situations. The judge said that the case was unusual in many ways. He pointed out that the First Information Report registered immediately after the incident and the FIR registered after the LDF assumed office were contradictory. Both the FIRs were filed at the same police station.

K Padmakumar, a senior Indian Police Service officer, even went to the extent of retracting the allegations he made in the first FIR. The judge said that the case was also unusual because the complainant himself, an inspector general of police, had investigated the case. The IG also came out with a press release three years later stating it was not necessary for police personnel to obey 'unlawful' orders of their superiors.

Another extraordinary feature the judge found about the case was the appointment of two prosecutors to render legal assistance, pending investigation of the case, following a meeting the complainant IG had with one of the accused. The prosecutors are usually appointed only when the case comes up before the court. In this case, two prosecutors were helping the investigators.

The judge also observed that the allegations made in the FIR were not in conformity with the findings of the judicial commission that went into the incident. Even though the commission's report ruled out any criminal conspiracy in the police firing, the government has slapped a case of conspiracy against Raghavan and the others. The judge said that it was difficult to believe the conspiracy theory because the concerned SP and the magistrate had taken charge only a day before the incident.

The government's case is that the former UDF minister had entered into a conspiracy with the police official to kill the Marxist activists. The judge also discovered that cases were filed against those found innocent by the commission.

The judge noted that the first accused in the case, Raghavan, had alleged malafide intentions on the part of the government because he was formerly a senior leader of the CPI-M who was expelled from the party in 1986 and a murder case was their way of hitting back at him.

Raghavan is obviously elated by the judgement. "The cat is finally out of the bag," he claimed. He told rediff.com that the judgement has vindicated his stand that the case was politically motivated. It is one of the false cases fabricated by the LDF government against its political adversaries, he said and added that the FIR was tampered with at the behest of the CPI-M bigwigs.

Raghavan said that he had gone to Koothuparampu as a minister to attend a public function. "If ministers were to be prosecuted for police firing in the functions they attended, the first man to undergo trial is the former CPI-M patriarch E M S Namboothiripad," Raghavan said. About 30 persons lost their lives in police firings during Namboothiripad's tenure as chief minister, he added. At Koothuparampu more than 4,000 Marxist youth wing activists, many of them armed with lethal weapons, had assembled with the express purpose of sabotaging his function, Raghavan alleged.

Raghavan said that the CPI-M was not ready to tolerate his attempts to build his own party in Kannur which they considered their bastion. "Though Kannur was the cradle of the CPI-M, it could not win any election there for a long time. The CPI-M leaders thought that they could regain their former prestige only by destroying me. The party had never imagined that I would continue to be politically active even after my expulsion," Raghavan said.

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