Chandrasekharan murder case: Pinarayi Vijayan visits Kunhananthan

KANNUR: CPM state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan on Saturday personally visited party leader P K Kunhananthan, who has been cooling his heel at the central prison here after he was awarded life imprisonment in the TP Chandrasekharan murder case.
Jail officials said Vijayan came to the jail around 10am, accompanied by MLA James Mathew, and interacted with Kunhananthan in the office of the assistant jailor.The meeting lasted for around 15 minutes and he met only Kunhananthan, they said.
Before the meeting was over, LDF candidate in Kannur P K Sreemathi along with CPM leader E P Jayarajan and MLA T V Rajesh also reached the jail. However, they did not have any personal interaction with Kunhananthan.
Sreemathi interacted with remand prisoners in the jail for some time. Sreemathi later said there were many remand prisoners in the jail and they were unable to vote. This was a human rights violation and she had lost some votes owing to this, she said.
Though many CPM leaders had visited K C Ramachandran and Kunhananthan after they were jailed in the Chandrasekharan murder case, this is for the first time that Vijayan visited them in the central prison.
Officials said the CPM leader had intimated them about his visit earlier. However, it was kept confidential, apparently in an effort to keep off the media glare. The earlier visits of CPM leaders including Kodiyeri Balakarishnan and A N Shamseer, the CPM candidate in Vadakara, had sparked a controversy.
It was a day before Ramachandran was expelled from the party over the TP murder case that Shamseer visited him, which led to speculations that he was there to convey the news of expulsion to take him into confidence before it was formally announced.
Jail officials said though there were not many visitors for Ramachandran after his expulsion from the party, Kunhananthan was still getting many visitors. However, the possibility of Kunhananthan's visitors meeting Ramachandran cannot be ruled out, they said.