Three Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh workers have been arrested for allegedly carrying out the murder of a Popular Front of India leader in Palakkad district of Kerala on April 15, the police said on Tuesday, and added that the trio were friends of an RSS leader who was killed in Palakkad in November last year.
ADGP (Law and Order) Vijay Sakhare told PTI that three persons -- Ramesh, Arumughan and Saravanan, all RSS workers -- have been arrested and they are believed to have directly carried out the killing of PF leader Subair (43) to avenge the death of RSS leader Sanjith in November 2021.
One of them, Ramesh, was a very close friend of Sanjith and according to the accused, the latter had said that if anything ever happens to him Subair would be responsible for it, the ADGP said.
However, the investigation into Sanjith's killing had not disclosed Subair's involvement, the senior officer pointed out.
Therefore, after Sanjith's murder, Ramesh allegedly started planning the murder of the PFI leader and the trio tried to kill him a couple of times, but were unsuccessful due to the presence of police in the area.
On April 15, they came again and carried out the murder, the officer said.
Sakhare also told PTI that efforts are on to ascertain whether there are any other conspirators or supporters, and all that is part of the investigation.
With regard to the killing of RSS leader S K Srinivasan (45), Sakhare said the accused have been identified and a "hunt is on to nab them".
"They are absconding. So the hunt is on to arrest them," the officer said.
Sakhare on Monday had said that among the culprits identified so far in both cases, there were party members or workers from both PFI-SDPI and BJP-RSS.
Srinivasan, a former district leader and office-bearer of the RSS, was attacked by a six-member gang at his motorbike shop in Melamuri near Palakkad on Saturday, barely 24 hours after Subair was hacked to death at Elappully in the district while he was returning home along with his father after offering prayers in a mosque on Friday afternoon.
The back-to-back killings involving BJP/RSS and SDPI/PFI is the second such incident in the past few months in Kerala.
In December last year in Alappuzha, a leader of SDPI and a leader of BJP were murdered within 24 hours.
