Union Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar was booked by the Kerala police on Tuesday, October 31. Two First Information Reports (FIR) have been filed against the Minister at the Ernakulam Central police station under sections 153 (provocation with intent to cause riot) and 153A (promoting enmity between different groups) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and 120(o) (penalty for causing nuisance and violation of public order) of The Kerala Police Act. The complainant in one of the FIR is the sub-inspector of the Ernakulam Cyber Cell.

The development comes a day after Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan came down heavily on the Minister, accusing him of spreading hate speech, linking the Kalamassery blasts to the Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s (CPI(M)) support for Palestine. On Tuesday, Pinarayi said that Rajeev was not “spitting out just any poison, but deadly poison”.

Within a few hours of the blasts being reported at a convention of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Kalamassery on Sunday, as the police investigation had just begun, Rajeev claimed that CPI(M)’s solidarity to Palestine was linked to the blasts. “Dirty, shameless, appeasement politics by a discredited CM (and HM) @pinarayivijayan besieged by corruption charges. Sitting in Delhi and protesting against Israel when in Kerala open calls by Terrorist Hamas for Jihad is causing attacks and bomb blasts on innocent Christians,” he said.

In the last two days, the CM and the Minister have engaged in a war of words. The CM said that even if he called the union minister of state a communal person, the minister would welcome it as a decoration.