Fifteen people have been sentenced to death by a Kerala court in the murder case of a Bharatiya Janata Party OBC wing leader Ranjith Sreenivasan that took place in Allapuzha in December 2021.
Mavelikkara additional district judge VG Sreedevi, on January 30, pronounced the judgement and sentenced the 15 members of the banned Popular Front of India (PFI) and Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI) who were convicted.
The court observed that the convicts were ‘trained to kill’ and added that the BJP leader was mercilessly killed in front of his mother, wife and infant, making it a ‘rarest of the rare’ case.
Following the verdict, five police personnel were posted at additional district judge VG Sreedevi’s residence near the court.
On December 19, 2021, Ranjith Sreenivasan, who was the state secretary of BJP’s OBC Morcha, was hacked to death by PFI and SDPI members in his home. Police say Sreenivasan’s murder was to avenge the death of SDPI state secretary KS Shan who was involved in the killing of an RSS member.
Sreenivasan’s murder took place merely 12 hours after Shan’s murder, police said.
Sreenivasan was a practising advocate at the Alappuzha Bar Association and was the BJP’s candidate for the Alappuzha Assembly constituency in 2021.
