The Alappuzha sessions court in Kerala handed down a death sentence to 15 individuals associated with the now-prohibited Islamist organization Popular Front of India (PFI) on Tuesday. This ruling is in connection with the murder of BJP OBC wing leader Ranjith Sreenivasan in December 2021.
Mavelikkara Additional District Judge V G Sreedevi pronounced the sentence. The prosecution pressed for the maximum punishment, asserting that the convicts constituted a “trained killer squad,” and the brutal manner in which the victim was murdered in front of his mother, infant, and wife classified it as among the “rarest of the rare” crimes.
The 15 individuals convicted include Naisam, Ajmal, Anoop, Mohammed Aslam, Abdul Kalam alias Salam, Saffaruddin, Manshad, Jaseeb Raja, Navas, Sameer, Nazir, Abdul Kalam, Zakir Hussain, Shaji, and Shernas Ashraf.
According to the prosecution, Ranjith Sreenivasan, the State secretary of BJP’s OBC Morcha and a lawyer, was brutally hacked to death by the accused at his residence in Vellakinar, Alappuzha municipality. The assailants had forcibly entered his house on the morning of December 19, 2021.
The murder of the BJP leader was considered an act of retaliation, responding to the killing of SDPI’s State secretary K S Shan at Mannancherry’s Kuppezham Junction in Kerala, which occurred just the night before.
All 15 accused were found guilty by the court on January 20.
The first eight accused,– Nizam, Ajmal, Anoop, Muhammad Aslam, Salam Ponnad, Abdul Salam, Safaruddin and Manshad– were found guilty of murder.
Ranjith Sreenivasan, the BJP OBC Morcha state secretary, was brutally attacked and killed in his home on December 19, 2021, in front of his family