The Muslim League, the second largest constituent of Kerala’s Congress-led ruling UDF, on Thursday said that it was not against any kind of investigation – even a CBI probe – into the conspiracy behind the 2003 Marad carnage in which eight Hindus were brutally massacred.
Lok Sabha member ET Muhammad Basheer, the party’s Kerala general secretary, said in Kozhikode that the Muslim League had even earlier favoured a CBI probe. The statement came amidst Opposition parties suspecting that the Government was trying to derail the Marad case in order to protect the Muslim League.
The Opposition parties, mainly the CPI(M), had alleged that the UDF Government had recently transferred the head of the special team of the Kerala Police’s Crime Branch which was probing the Marad incident, an act which effectively froze the investigation, to protect the Muslim League by derailing the case.
“We are not against any investigation by any agency,” Basheer said after a meeting of the Muslim League’s State secretariat in Kozhikode on Thursday. “We have no problem if the follow-up probe by the Crime Branch team continues. We don’t oppose even a probe by the CBI,” he said. The meeting also passed a resolution to this effect.
Going a step further, Basheer said that the party that had been criticised by the judicial commission that looked into the Marad massacre was not the Muslim League but the CPI(M). If there was a probe into links (of political parties) with extremists, many of those who were pretending to be “saints” could face trouble, he said.
The Muslim League had not tried to sabotage the Marad case and it had nothing to do with the transfer of the Crime Branch official from the probe team, Basheer asserted adding that a campaign was on against his party. The CPI(M) and the Jama’at-e-Islami were formulating sinister strategies against the Muslim League, he alleged.
Eight Hindus and a Muslim were killed on May 2, 2003 in a nightly attack in Marad fishing village in Kozhikode district. This massacre, which came to be known as Marad 2, was later interpreted as a reaction to the riot that took place in the coastal village in January, 2002 in which five persons were killed.
The Opposition parties have been alleging that the Muslim League had close connections with the Marad massacre. This theory gathered credibility after the Government transferred CM Pradeep Kumar, SP (Crime Branch) heading the probe into the Marad massacre, to the Kerala State Human Rights Commission, effectively freezing the investigation.
Despite repeated requests from the former LDF Government, the Centre had refused to launch a CBI probe into the massacre. This strengthened suspicion that the State Congress had used its influence on New Delhi with the intention of protecting the Muslim League. Basheer’s statement came in the context of the inability of the party leadership to effectively explain this situation.
At the same time, Basheer said the Muslim League did not want to indulge in any more discussions over the controversy regarding the alleged move of the Kerala Police (Intelligence) to snoop on the emails of 258 Muslim personalities and institutions and ten others. “That is a closed chapter,” Basheer said.
