Nine RSS workers sentenced to life for 2005 murder of CPI(M) member in Kerala

Nine RSS workers were sentenced to life imprisonment by a Thalassery court on Tuesday for the 2005 murder of a CPI(M) member in Kerala’s Kannapuram Chunda. The victim, 25-year-old Rijith Sankaran, was attacked near a temple during a period of political tension between the two parties.

Rijith was ambushed while walking home on October 3, 2005, by a group of armed RSS workers. He was fatally attacked, and three of his friends were injured in the assault. The Additional District Sessions Court in Thalassery found the accused guilty on January 4. Of the 10 original accused, one had died in a road accident.

The convicted individuals are Sudhakaran (57), Jayesh (41), Ranjith (44), Ajeendran (51), Anilkumar (52), Rajesh (46), Sreekanth (47), his brother Sreejith (43), and Bhaskaran (67). The court convicted them under various sections of the Indian Penal Code, including murder (Section 302), attempted murder (Section 307), unlawful assembly (Section 143), rioting (Section 147), wrongful restraint (Section 341), and voluntarily causing hurt with weapons (Section 324).