Two more assailants held for killing BJP OBC Morcha leader in Kerala’s Alappuzha

Alappuzha: A Special Investigation Team (SIT) headed by ADGP Vijay Sakhare on Saturday arrested two more people allegedly involved in the killing of a BJP OBC Morcha leader in Kerala’s coastal Alappuzha district last month.

”Two more persons directly involved in the killing of Ranjith Sreenivas have been arrested”, Sakhare told PTI.

With this, the number of persons who have been arrested in connection with the killing of the BJP leader has now reached 10, police said.

Of the 10 arrested persons, four were part of the gang that killed Sreenivas while six were arrested for hatching the conspiracy to murder him, they said.

The arrested persons are activists of the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI), the political offshoot of Islamist outfit Popular Front of India (PFI), police said.

Police said one more person who was allegedly involved in the conspiracy to kill the OBC Morcha leader has been taken into custody.

Police have gone after other absconding accused in the case, Sakhara said, while adding, ”we will catch all of them” Saturday’s arrest of the two members of the killer gang has brought some relief for police, which came under attack from the BJP for alleged delay in nabbing the culprits directly involved in the crime.

The back-to-back killings of two political activists — BJP’s Sreenivas and the other of SDPI’s K S Shan — in coastal Alappuzha district had rocked Kerala last week.

Shan, the state secretary of SDPI, was killed by a gang on the night of December 18 while he was returning home in Alappuzha, while the BJP OBC Morcha state secretary Sreenivas was hacked to death in front of his family by some assailants in his house on December 19 morning in the same district.

Police have asserted that all the culprits involved in the heinous acts will be brought to book and added that they were also investigating the ”larger conspiracy” behind the two killings.