On Tuesday, the window panes and furniture of the RSS base were damaged and shattered after a bomb was hurled at its office located in Payyannur, Kannur. While there are no injuries and casualties reported after the attack, the BJP suspects CPM to be behind the attack.
According to the reports, the incident happened on Tuesday morning in the area which is close to the local police station. BJP leader Tom Vadakkan held the state administration responsible for the attack and said that such attacks reflected the administration’s failure in maintaining proper law and order. “It is shocking and unfortunate that the law and order situation has deteriorated to the level of hurling bombs at social organizations. And that is not acceptable in civil society”, he said.
Kerala | Visuals from RSS office in Payyannur, Kannur which was allegedly bombed early this morning, leaving the window glass broken pic.twitter.com/ALjpuXNH2K
— ANI (@ANI) July 12, 2022
Further, he was quoted saying that many RSS workers working for the society were attacked in the past and this kind of law and order situation has to be quickly dealt with. “The police and the state administration are answerable for this. The people of Kerala are not going to take this lying down”, he added.
Calling Kannur a sensitive place, Vadakkan reiterated that the state government will be held responsible for damages to any political office in the state. “The police’s connivance is very dangerous. There are instances where the police station is 100 meters away and still nothing happens. Offices are to be protected specially in a sensitive district like Kannur”, he said.
RSS offices and workers have been on the target of political opponents in Kerala since long. In 2021, a 27-year-old Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) worker named Pramuk Sanjith was killed by Subair, Salam, and Isahak, all of them natives of Kerala. The incident took place on Kinassery near Palakkad-Thrissur National Highway. There were a total of 15 wounds on Sanjith’s body.
On April 16, 2022, a 45-year-old RSS worker named Srinivasan was attacked by a group of assailants at his shop in the heart of Palakkad town. The BJP then alleged that the Social Democratic Party of India, the political offshoot of the Political Front of India (PFI), was behind the killing of Srinivasan. Reportedly, the incident occurred less than 24 hours after a PFI leader was killed in a village near Palakkad.
Also, in February this year, 26-year-old RSS worker Sharath Chandran of Thrikunnapuzha was killed, and his friend Manoj was injured after a group of 15 persons attacked them at Kumarapuram in Alappuzha. The BJP had then suspected that CPM and DYFI workers were responsible for the killing. However, the police had maintained that the murder had nothing to do with political rivalry.