T P Chandrasekharan murder case: Three CPI(M) men among 11 awarded life imprisonment

KOCHI: CPM, which leads the Opposition Left Democratic Front in Kerala, suffered a setback on Tuesday when three of its workers were sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of rebel communist leader TP Chandrashekharan.

Awarding life sentence to 8 others, Marad special additional sessions judge R Narayana Pisharady said that the Revolutionary Marxist Party leader was not murdered due to any personal animosity.

Calling it a cruel and inhuman murder, he said it was well planned and that Chandrashekharan was killed due to political enmity. However, he added that the murder did not fall in the rarest of rare cases and hence the guilty were not given death sentences.

Those given life term included all seven members of the gang that hacked Chandrashekharan to death. Chandrashekharan was a CPM renegade and had formed Revolutionary Marxist Party (RMP) shortly before he was murdered. CPM had claimed that it had no role in the political murder. CPM workers convicted were Kunjananthan, Ramachandran Master and Manoj. The court imposed a higher fine for the three. For a party that has been maintaining it was not involved in the case, the order has come as a setback.

Reacting to the verdict, CPM said that it respected the court verdict but would challenge it. CPM’s resolve to save the three party members convicted was matched by RMP leaders who said that they would appeal in the Kerala High Court as they were not satisfied with the sentence.