THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The court found eight RSS activists guilty in the murder case of Ashokan, a CPM activist and native of Kattakada. The Thiruvananthapuram Sixth Additional Sessions Court will pronounce the quantum of sentence on January 15. The verdict comes 11 years after the incident.
Ashokan was murdered on May 5 in 2013. A personal rivalry between Shambhu, a money lender and Ashokan led to the murder. Ashokan had opposed Shambhu for his act of making the life miserable of Binu, Asokan’s friend, who had borrowed Rs 10,000 from him. Though, Binu repaid the sum, Shambhu demanded more money as interest and started disturbing him, at which point Asokan intervened. Shambhu had also publicly threatened to kill Ashokan following their dispute, for he feared that Ashokan, being a social activist, could tip him off to the police. Also, it was a time when the state police had initiated a special drive to nab all illegal money lenders in the state.
There was a total of 19 accused in the case. One of them died and another was made an approver. The court found Shambhu, Sreejith, Hari, Ambili, Santhosh, Sajeev, Ashokan alias Anni and Prashanth alias Pazhinji, guilty in the case.