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Journalism of Courage
ON FEBRUARY 21, at a public meeting held at Thillankeri, a village in Kerala’s Kannur district, the CPI(M)’s top brass turned out in strength to distance themselves from A P Akash alias Akash Thillankeri, a former party worker.
Seated in the front row, as speaker after speaker disowned Akash as “quotation mafia (gangs contracted for criminal assignments)” and “an enemy greater than the RSS”, was Vanjeri Ravindran, Akash’s father, whose presence at the event as a “disciplined party worker” was meant to underline the party’s cold severance from some of its thuggish elements.
Days after that public meeting, on February 28, police arrested Akash under sections of the Kerala Prevention of Anti-Social Activities Act. Akash, who faces at least 11 criminal cases, was arrested for the 2018 murder of Youth Congress worker S P Shuhaib. Akash’s accomplice Jijo, also from Thillenkeri, who faces 10 criminal cases, was arrested with him.
While Akash’s rising clout in the party and his open skirmishes with the law were evident to all, what provoked the CPI(M) to distance itself from Akash was a stunning claim that he made through a Facebook post last month. Akash, 28, alleged that party leaders didn’t back its cadre who were involved in the murder of Shuhaib. He went on to complain that while “those who passed the order to commit the crime were given jobs in the co-operative sector (in which the party has major stakes in Kerala), those who executed the crime were dumped and now faced poverty and boycott from the party’’.
Akash’s story – his popularity on social media, his rise through the ranks as he flexed muscle and might for the party and his descent into anti-social activities – is the kind of narrative that the CPM, with all its inherent contradictions, has struggled to deal with.
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Thillankeri, a village near the hilly Peralimala in Kannur, has held a special place in the CPM’s party lore. The site of a legendary 1948 peasant uprising led by the then undivided Communist Party of India against exploitative landlords, 75 years later, Thillankeri has ended up being the ground for the CPI(M)’s biggest moment of introspection as it is forced to take a public position against lumpen elements within the party.
Over the years, as the Communist movement spread out of this largely agrarian village, Thillankeri’s politics mirrored the impressive, and often muscular, growth of the CPI(M).
The Thillankeri panchayat is ruled by the CPI(M) and the party has 520 members here. However, in the 2020 local body elections, the BJP made its debut, winning two out of 13 seats. Most of the villagers are daily workers, many engaged in the construction sector. The region has several temples, some of them run by Communist families.
At Vanjeri, a ward under Thillankeri panchayat, two cars and a jeep are parked in front of Lakshmi Nilayam, Akash’s two-storied house. Ravindran has gone to Kannur to meet his son Akash in jail. Later, talking on the phone, Ravindran says, “Akash’s arrest is my personal issue. Why should the party be concerned about him? Media has no role in this issue. Neither I nor the party is worried about Akash. The party need not be fair to me; the party should be concerned only about its commitment to society. The party’s concern is to fight the BJP and Narendra Modi. I will not denounce the party over this arrest. Politically, Akash is still with the Left. My concern is not my son, but the party agenda,” he told The Indian Express.
Ravindran has been the face of the CPI(M) at Thillankeri for the last four decades. Despite being a loyal worker, Ravindran never went up the party ladder. His wife Dakshayini was a member of the CPI(M) women’s wing and a one-term member of the local panchayat.
“Their family is staunchly with the party. Ravindran comes from a traditionally rich family, but gave up most of his wealth for the party. Akash opted for anti-social activities as he realised the party wouldn’t give his family any protection,” says a party worker in Thillankeri.
Over the last decade or so, as he rode an ascendant and often aggressive CPM, Akash emerged as a rallying point for young party cadres and sympathisers. Known to be in the camp of P Jayarajan, senior CPM leader and the party strongman from Kannur, Akash is among the members of P J Army, a Facebook page of Jayarajan fans. Which is why, when the CPM decided to disown Akash at the February 21 meeting at Thillankeri, it insisted on Jayarajan speaking against Akash — it was meant to send out a signal to cadres.
In 2016, Akash was allegedly involved in the murder of RSS worker Vineesh. While the CPI(M) stood by Akash and maintained that the attack on Vineesh was the result of differences among RSS cadres, the police investigation found that Akash and others had targeted Vineesh in retaliation for an attack on the vehicle of a local CPI(M) worker. Akash was arrested in the case and later released on bail.
However, the arrest and the backlash did little to dent Akash’s popularity. Akash continued to lead CPI(M) marches against the RSS-BJP, often raising provocative slogans. In one such video of a march, Akash is heard saying, “The knife that chopped Vineesh hasn’t been thrown into the Arabian Sea yet.”
Since the Vinesh murder and the events that followed coincided with a period of frequent RSS-CPI(M) clashes in Kannur, Akash soon emerged as the muscle behind many of the attacks on political rivals. While the CPI(M) sought to capitalise on his popularity by making him part of the party’s social media wing in Thiruvananthapuram — sources claim it was an attempt to keep him away from criminal politics – Akash soon returned to his village.
Soon, embarrassingly for the party, Akash’s alleged links with quotation and smuggling rackets began to come out to the public. Local party sources said Akash developed these contacts when he was jailed for the murder of the RSS worker. In 2021, the Customs raided his house in connection with the gold smuggling case. In 2018, Akash was jailed in connection with another murder – of youth Congress worker Shuhaib from Mattannur in the Kannur district.
This time, however, the CPI(M) sacked him – Akash’s long list of alleged misdemeanours had left the party with little choice.
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On March 3, speaking in the Assembly, Opposition leader V D Satheesan pointed to Akash’s association with P J Army. “Akash did not become a criminal overnight. The CPI(M) has been protecting him for several years,’’ he said.
In his reply, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said, “CPI(M) is not a party that is sheltered by goons. We need not protect any criminals. The government will take all steps to crack down on criminal gangs. We don’t underestimate the challenges posed by the quotation gangs,’’ he said.
Speaking to The Indian Express, CPI(M) Kannur district secretary M V Jayarajan said the party has not assigned any social media task to “killer gangs”. “The party policy is to oppose the mafia and such gangs. Thillankeri is a land of martyrs for the CPI(M). The party is unitedly fighting against this mafia gang. We don’t want the support of any gang to fight against RSS.”
Sources at Thillankeri said Akash’s recent outburst against the party stemmed from his disappointment with the organisation. “He had a feeling that while the party used him to further its agenda, it gave back little. He also thought that the reason he strayed into anti-social activities was because the party failed to take care of him,” said a party leader.
