In Delhi, a smashed windscreen, in Kannur why there will be blood

The latest National Crime Records Bureau says this district logged the country’s highest number of riot cases in 2006 — 737 cases, averaging more than a couple every day. Every once in a while, Kannur throws up an equally telltale statistical symptom of what goes on. Consider this: At the fag end of its tenure, the last Left government of E K Nayanar read out in the state Assembly Kannur’s record for the four preceding years. In 2001, over 200 bomb explosions, 180 killings (the government claim that only 26 of these were certified political murders, was soon discounted), besides over 1000 cases of attempted murder.

The Kannur blood game has mostly been a Red vs Saffron show but the Congress, too, has been pitching in with equal fervour. So far, since the killings began in the 1970s, close to 300 people have been bombed, stabbed or chopped in homes, shops, schools and on the streets. The less lucky survive with arms, legs chopped or blown off in the retaliatory strikes. The targets are mostly low-level party workers or sympathizers, usually picked at random to quickly even the scores after each killing.

Kannur, one of Kerala’s first crucibles for evolving labour into a social process, remained significantly Red way back from the 1950s. The Left bagged over 60% votes even in the last local municipal elections, the Congress-led UDF close to 33 per cent — and the BJP, less than one per cent. This may be misleading. A lot of RSS-BJP votes in Kannur traditionally go to the Congress to jointly upset Red candidates.

Political killing here became de rigeur after the Emergency, when CPM men first went after Congress workers who had done them in. After many years of mutual attacks and killings, including a local Congress leader sending a hired killer with a gun after a senior CPM man to kill him on a train, the CPM focused more on the BJP-RSS, which was beginning to erode some of its traditional bases.

All through this, political peace in Kannur has more often been a fleeting delusion. Peace here is only the necessary break for consolidating turf, topping up the weapon stockpile in scores of village homes, party offices, even temple premises — swords, hatchets and bombs. In many villages, party-sponsored “bomb-makers” veritably run a lethal industry.

Both the CPM and the RSS have their own professional hit squads here. Police sources say that of late, RSS hit men are mostly drawn on a need-to basis from beyond the district, for hit-and-run retaliatory killings. This is since the police machinery is in CPM control and Ground Zero is usually Home Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan’s own constituency, Thalasserry.

In CPM’s case, however, the hit men are maintained in-house and locally employed in the many CPM-run establishments in Kannur, including the local service cooperatives. Not all, though: One of the chief CPM hitmen in recent years involved in dozens of cases, is now, ironically, running a popular bone-setting clinic in Kannur on the side.

Ideological rhetoric may have been strictly for the ranks but equity is deadly important here, even in killings. CPM sources here will tell you they have well over 140 recorded “martyrs” already, the RSS-BJP will reel out a somewhat equally long list of their own Tyagis, the Congress will recall their dead and the living dead.

There are dozens of so-called “party villages” here, borders clearly marked out and defended with a near-tribal ferocity. These are run as the pocketboroughs of the CPM or the Sangh Parivar, as the case may be. The parties in command decide on life and living — in some, even what newspaper is read, who marries whom. These villages have been key focus of most of the recurring violence.

Few “political killers” here end up in jail. In cases involving the ruling parties, the police traditionally go by a list of accused handed to them by local leaders, with enough alibis for courts to toss the case out of the window later. Witnesses rarely come out to testify. In one case at Peralassery a few years ago, a CPM mob cut off a Congress worker’s hand. The police charged a case but the victim refused to identify the accused. “I don’t want to lose my other hand as well,.”he told the court.

In another typical case, a teacher and senior BJP man KT Jayakrishnan, himself accused in a CPM man’s killing, was chopped to death in his room in full view of his students. A local court sentenced five CPM men to death, the Kerala High court upheld it. The Supreme Court, which let four of them off for want of evidence on appeal later, observed: “The police investigation, for whatever reason, had not been conducted properly. The slipshod manner in which the investigation was carried out was amply borne out from the records. Despite the fact that a teacher in the classroom before the students of tender age had brutally been murdered, the police did not appear to have shown a very keen interest in the matter. It was expected that the teachers (in the school) would speak out the truth, but they did not.”

Not that it would make a big difference to the killers, particularly of the CPM, if they ended up in the local central jail.

The jail, which used to have scores of convicted political hitmen from the district, had remained a CPM fortress barely a few months ago. This was until the state head of jails, M G A Raman, graphically told the Kerala High Court how “comrade convicts” lumped together there on government’s orders were virtually running the prison themselves, assaulting fellow prisoners of other parties and enjoying the good life. The court ordered the CPM prisoners to another jail, and the government promptly shunted Raman out.