15 PFI members awarded death penalty over murder of Kerala BJP leader Ranjith Sreenivasan in 2021

A Kerala court on January 30 sentenced 15 members of the now-outlawed Islamist group Popular Front of India (PFI) to death for their involvement in the brutal murder of Ranjith Sreenivasan, a BJP OBC Morcha leader, in 2021.

The court found that eight of the convicts were directly involved in the crime, while four were guilty due to their armed presence at the scene of the crime.

Three others were convicted for their role in plotting the murder. The convicted individuals are Naisam, Ajmal, Anoop, Mohammed Aslam, Abdul Kalam alias Salam, Saffaruddin, Manshad, Jaseeb Raja, Navas, Sameer, Nazir, Abdul Kalam, Zakir Hussain, Shaji and Shernas Ashraf.

The incident took place on December 19, 2021, when Sreenivasan was brutally attacked and killed at his home in Alappuzha, Kerala, in front of his family. The prosecution discovered that SDPI-PFI activists had created a hit list with Sreenivasan, a lawyer, at the top. The hit list was found in the mobile phone of the third accused, Anoop.

Sreenivasan was killed just hours following the murder of K S Shan, a 39-year-old SDPI leader from Alappuzha. Shan was allegedly attacked by an RSS-BJP affiliated gang at Mannanchery in Alappuzha on the evening of December 18.

He was knocked off his two-wheeler by a car and then brutally attacked by the gang. Despite being rushed to a local hospital and later a Kochi hospital, Shan succumbed to his injuries at approximately 11.30 pm. In a related incident the following Sunday morning, Ranjith Sreenivasan was murdered roughly 10 km away. Sreenivasan, who previously ran for the BJP in the 2016 Alappuzha Assembly election, was attacked by a group of 12 men who arrived on six bikes. CCTV footage from the vicinity confirmed this.

Investigations revealed that out of the 15 individuals convicted for Sreenivasan's murder, eight were directly involved in the act. Hours after Shan's murder, the assailants targeted Sreenivasan, conducting a preliminary surveillance of his residence. In reaction to the murders, BJP and SDPI activists demonstrated on the streets, triggering an increase in police vigilance throughout the state.

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