After upholding Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s view that Alan Suhaib and Thaha Fazal, the two Kerala students charged with Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, are 'Maoists,' CPI(M) now condemns the Centre’s intervention in handing over the case to NIA.
The official statement of CPI(M) state secretariat says that it is deplorable that the Centre intervened to hand over the case to the NIA without even consulting the Kerala government.
20-year-old Alan Suhaib and 24-year-old Thaha Fazal, two students from Kozhikode, were arrested for allegedly distributing pro-Maoist pamphlets following the killings of alleged Maoists by the Thunderbolt force in the forests of Palakkad.
“Law and order is the state government’s responsibility, it is deplorable that the Centre gave NIA the charge of the case without even discussing with the state,” stated CPI(M) on their official Facebook page. The party also added that the Kerala police was going ahead accurately with their investigation in the case.
CPI(M) also states that transferring the case to NIA will only weaken the federal system of governance.
Recently, after the case was handed over to NIA, Alan’s mother Sabitha Sekhar had criticised the state government, saying that they never expected such an act from a Left-led government. Sabitha had said that it was cruel for the Chief Minister to brand them as Maoists.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had said that both Alan and Thaha are Maoists and that they are not CPI(M) workers. Following this, Kozhikode district committee of CPI(M) had come out supporting the Chief Minister’s point. DYFI, the youth wing of CPI(M), has also come out recently stating that they believe the police’s accusation that the duo is Maoist.
The CPI (M) government had come under much criticism from all quarters for using the UAPA against the young men, but the Chief Minister supported the police's call to use UAPA. The arrest of the two students by charging them with draconian UAPA for allegedly distributing pro-Maoist pamphlets was earlier condemned by CPI(M) leaders like Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechury.