Three RSS workers have been arrested for allegedly carrying out the murder of a Popular Front of India leader in Palakkad district on April 15, police said on Tuesday.
The three were friends of an RSS leader who was killed in the district in November last year, the police said.
Additional Director General of Police (Law and Order) Vijay Sakhare said Ramesh, Arumughan and Saravanan were believed to have carried out the killing of PFI leader Subair (43) to avenge the death of RSS leader Sanjith.
One of them, Ramesh, was a close friend of Sanjith and according to the accused, the latter had said that if anything ever happened to him, Subair would be responsible for it, the ADGP said.
However, the investigation into Sanjith’s killing had not disclosed Subair’s involvement, the officer said.
Therefore, after Sanjith’s murder, Ramesh allegedly started planning the murder of the PFI leader and the trio tried to kill him a couple of times, but were unsuccessful due to the presence of police in the area.
On April 15, they came again and carried out the murder, the officer said.
Sakhare said efforts were on to ascertain whether there were any other conspirators or supporters.
With regard to the killing of RSS leader SK Srinivasan (45), Sakhare said the accused had been identified and a “hunt is on to nab them”.
Sakhare on Monday had said that among the culprits identified so far in both cases, there were party members or workers from both PFI-SDPI and BJP-RSS.
Srinivasan, a former district leader and office-bearer of the RSS, was attacked by a six-member gang at his motorbike shop in Melamuri on Saturday, barely 24 hours after Subair was hacked to death at Elappully in the district while he was returning home along with his father after offering prayers in a mosque on Friday afternoon.
The back-to-back killings involving BJP/RSS and SDPI/PFI was the second such incident in the past few months in Kerala.
In December last year in Alappuzha, a leader of SDPI and a leader of BJP were murdered within 24 hours.