Author: Pioneer News Service
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: September 27, 2006
'Two IUML leaders had prior knowledge'
The judicial commission which probed the Marad
killings in Kerala has indicted the radical Islamist organisation, National
Development Front (NDF), and two leaders of Indian Union Muslim League, Congress'
ally in the Opposition UDF, for planning and executing the gruesome violence
on the night of May 2, 2003 in which nine persons were killed.
The Justice Thomas P Joseph Commission's report
will be tabled in the Kerala Assembly on Wednesday. Salient features of the
report have been selectively leaked to some mediapersons a day before its
submission.
The report says that activists of the NDF
were involved in planning and carrying out the massacre. It also adds that
a senior politician belonging to the Muslim League had prior knowledge of
the conspiracy and that another local League leader was involved in or was
aware of the plan for the killings that shook the coastal village of Marad,
according to sources.
The fishing village of Marad, off Kozhikode,
first hit the headlines on January 3, 2002 when Hindus and Muslims clashed
after a trivial altercation during celebrations on New Year's eve. Two Hindus
and three Muslims were found dead the morning after. A year-and-a-half later,
a large mob chopped and hacked eight Hindu fishermen to death on the beach
on May 2, 2003. One assailant was hacked to death by mistake by his compatriots
during the carnage.
The commission's report is believed to have
revealed that Muslim League State committee member and former MLA MC Mayin
Haji, who is also chairman of the Calicut Development Authority, and IUML's
local leader PP Moideen Koya had prior knowledge of the conspiracy. It says
that an incident like this could not have taken place without the knowledge
of local leaders of the IUML.
Mayin Haji, asked for his comments, has brushed
off the reported charges against him.
The report, say sources, points to a larger
conspiracy than what the Crime Branch, which probed the incident earlier,
had found. The Crime Branch had failed to identify the conspirators or the
source of the arms used by the attackers.
The commission is believed to have rejected
the allegation that the Marad killings followed an attack on IUML activists.
But it is said to have held certain local IUML, CPI(M) and BJP leaders responsible
for politicising the first Marad killings in 2002 in which five persons died.
The report, say sources, suggests that this politicising led to the May 2003
violence. Meanwhile, Kerala Home Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, reacting
to the media leaks, said the report is much more comprehensive than what has
been told to newspersons, suggesting the indictment could be harsher and far-reaching.
Leaders of the UDF have charged the Government with leaking the report to
the media before tabling it in the Assembly.
The State Cabinet, however, has not allowed
this technicality to stand in the way of recommending action against a host
of officers, believed to have been indicted by the commission. According to
sources, the Cabinet has approved action against former Kozhikode district
collector TO Sooraj, former city police commissioner Sanjeev Kumar Padjoshi,
assistant commissioner of police (Kozhikode) Abdul Rahim and Mahesh Kumar
Singhla, former IG (Crime Branch), whom the commission is said to have held
guilty of not taking effective pre-emptive action even though they had information
about it.
The commission is said to have observed that
Intelligence reports on the possibility of violence at Marad had been provided
to Sooraj and Padjoshi much before the communal violence. The report, say
sources, has also criticised then chief minister AK Antony, who held the Home
portfolio.
The commission has taken a serious note of
the deposition of former DGP KJ Joseph that Abdul Rahim "failed to investigate
and take prompt action in Marad." The DGP deposed that Rahim not only
"hid the truth from his superior officers" but also tried to establish
that the key accused in the massacre on the beach on May 2, 2003 were "not
guilty".
The report talks about the presence of extremist
outfits with foreign links operating in Kerala, and slams both UDF and LDF
Governments for their failure to take any effective action against these elements,
being "interested only in vote-banks". The commission has recommended
that a Central agency like the CBI should be asked to find out the "larger
conspiracy".
The report of the commission, set up in 2004
and headed by District Judge Thomas P Joseph, has been kept under wraps by
the LDF Government which received it two months ago.
