Mahija, mother of Jishnu Pranoy, will not meet Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Saturday.
Mahija said her decision was due to the Chief Minister’s derogative statement asking ‘what was the purpose of the protest and what the family had gained from it’. Majiha told TNM that the Chief Minister’s statement was painful, and it prompted her to abstain from meeting him. An appointment for Jishnu’s family to meet the Chief Minister on Saturday was included in the ten point agreement reached between them and the government as the family ended its fasting on April 9.
“It was painful for me to hear the CM's statement. Even after all the struggle we have gone through it was not fair on his part to make the comment,” Mahija said. The family members of Jishnu Pranoy, an engineering student who was found dead at his hostel room in Nehru College Pampadi in January, ended their fasting on April 9. The police action towards the family forcefully removing them from from the DGP's office, during their march to his office on April 5, led to the fasting. The family has been consistently demanding that all the accused in the case related to Jishnu's death should be taken into custody.
There are four accused in the case P Krishnadas (Chairman of the Nehru group), Sanjith K. Viswanath (PRO of the college), Vice Principal K N Sakthivel and Dipin (exam cell coordinator). The protest was to get Sakthivel and Praveen arrested. Jishnu’s relatives also said they haven’t got the original copy of the agreement with the government yet, but only a fake one. “In the copy we got, which is not the original one, everything is in favour of the government. In the discussion with the government, we had demanded that lapses of the prosecution should be probed. The prosecution was not able to frame solid arguments against the accused which made the case weak. We wanted to know how that happened. That demand is missing from the copy of the agreement we got. We have been communicating with government representatives to get the original agreement, but in vain,” a relative said.
Jishnu’s uncle Sreejith said that government's move to approach the Supreme Court to cancel the bail of Krishnadas and to appoint an investigation team under Crime Branch ADGP Nitin Agarwal to probe police excesses was welcome. On April 9, Pinarayi Vijayan also had called Mahija over phone and assured that all the accused in the case will be booked.
However Special Prosecutor Udayabhanu told TNM that the priority at that time was to end the fasting of the family and to arrest the accused who had been absconding. Sakthivel was arrested while Praveen got anticipatory bail. “There is nothing to hide from the family. The prosecution lapses had happened in the earlier stage,” he said.