J U D G M E N T

D r. A.K. Jayasankaran Nambiar, J.

Democracy thrives on the peaceful exchange of ideas, not the violent imposition of beliefs. Political violence is the poison that corrodes the roots of democratic principles.

- Amartya Sen On the morning of 05.05.2012, the people of Kerala woke up to the grim news of a gruesome political murder. T.P. Chandrasekharan, the leader of the Revolutionary Marxist Party (hereinafter referred to as 'RMP' for brevity), had been hacked to death the night before by a group of assassins. The wounds inflicted on him were so brutal and numerous that PW136 Dr.Sujith Sreenivas, the Assistant Professor and Assistant Police Surgeon at the Forensic Medicine department of the Kozhikode Medical College, who conducted the post-mortem examination, opined that it was indicative of the aggressive and hostile nature of the assailants. The question that loomed large, however, was, “Who would commit such a barbaric act and why?”

2. The prosecution would have us believe that the public opinion at No.571/2015 the time was that it was the political rivalry between leaders of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI (M)) and the victim that led to the commission of