Ready to investigate Kannur murders : CBI tells HC

Kochi, Oct 17 : The CBI on Tuesday told the Kerala High Court it is ready to investigate all the political murders that took place in Kannur in the past one year, officials said.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) counsel told this to the court, when a petition by a Kannur-based trust came up, demanding CBI probe into the seven political murders that took place in Kannur district, in which the CPI-M workers are alleged to have murdered BJP/RSS workers.

The trust demanded a probe into the seven murders took place between October 2016 and July 2017.

Hearing the petition, the court said it was astonished as to why this is happening in one district and directed the police to file detailed reports in all the seven cases on October 25.

Responding to it, Advocate General C.P. Sudhakara Prasad told the court that "even family disputes are being turned into political murders".

Kannur is the home district of Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and is also considered the strongest bastion of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M). Vijayan assumed office in May last year.

The court direction comes just hours before the end of "Jana Raksha Yatra" in Thiruvananthapuram, led by Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) Kerala unit President Kummanem Rajasekheran.

The yatra began from Kannur earlier this month and was meant to highlight "the killing of BJP/RSS cadres by the CPI-M".

BJP national President Amit Shah, who flagged off the yatra from Kannur, arrived in Thiruvananthapuram to lead the yatra and address the public meeting.