The Payyannur police on Saturday arrested five individuals in connection with an incident in which the car of a supporter of CPM whistleblower V Kunhikrishnan was torched. The booked are Sudheesh, Ajay, Sujith, Sunaj, and Aswin, all of whom are associated with DYFI or CPM. 

The incident happened on April 9, when the car of T Purushothaman, seen as a backroom strategist for Kunhikrishnan’s campaign, was set on fire at Mahadeva Gramam in Payyannur town.

The same night, the compound wall of a Congress supporter, K P Rekha, was demolished after it was used for graffiti backing Kunhikrishnan at Annoor in Payyannur town. Kunhikrishnan said the compound wall around his farmland, about 1 km from his house in Vellur, was also demolished in the early hours of Saturday because it carried campaign graffiti in his support. A poly-greenhouse inside the plot was also set on fire.

On Friday night, a Maruti Alto car belonging to M K Narayanan, a panchayat employee, was also set on fire at Mathamangalam in the Eramam-Kuttoor panchayat in the Payyannur constituency. Kunhikrishnan alleged that the attack was linked to Narayanan’s Facebook posts supporting him ahead of the election.

Narayanan is a leader of the Kerala NGO Union, a CPM-affiliated organisation of non-gazetted government employees. While Narayanan declined to speak to the media, his family said the 2020-model Alto, parked in the shed in front of the house, was set ablaze. Narayanan managed to douse the flames in time after noticing the fire.

Kunhikrishnan, a former CPM Kannur district committee member, was expelled from the party after he publicly accused Payyannur MLA T I Madhusoodanan of misappropriating funds raised for the family of slain party worker C V Dhanraj, as well as funds meant for the Payyannur area committee office in 2016 and his own election in 2021. When the party renominated Madhusoodanan as the Payyannur candidate, Kunhikrishnan entered the fray as an independent with the backing of the UDF.