BJP leader killed in front of daughter: ‘When she came running, gang brandished sword’

Ranjith, his brother said, had returned home on Sunday morning after leaving his elder daughter, Bhagya, at her tuition classes. For the family, nothing seemed out of the ordinary until then.

“There was no reason for Ranjith to panic,” said an acquaintance at the family’s home on Monday. “He had never been involved in any criminal case. (But) when an SDPI state-level leader (Shan) was killed, the retaliating gang was looking for a BJP leader of the same stature…”

Known as a suave face of the BJP in Alappuzha, Ranjith was to start a new innings in his political career on Sunday, after he was made the state secretary of BJP’s state OBC Morcha.

Abhijith said his brother was beaten with a hammer on the head and hacked mindlessly by the gang, which also vandalised the house. The gang, he said, hacked Ranjith to death and disfigured his face with multiple wounds in the presence of his mother, wife and younger daughter.

While Bhagya was at tuition classes, Ranjith’s younger daughter, Hridya, a Class VI student, saw the attack, Abhijith said.

“When she came running to the drawing room, the gang brandished a sword against her. When my mother fell down in the attack, the gang pressed a chair against her face,’’ he said.

Ranjith, who rose as a leader from fishermen caste Dheevara, was a lawyer; his wife Lisha, too, is an advocate in Alappuzha.

The BJP worker’s body was cremated in the premises of the family’s ancestral house at Arattupuzha in the district on Monday evening.