Palakkad: Three local leaders of RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) were arrested here on Friday in connection with the murder of Popular Front of India (PFI) activist A Subair at Elappully last month.
Suchitran, a native of Kottekadu, Girish of Elappully and Jineesh (Kannan) were taken into custody by the Kasabad Police here.
With this, nine persons are in custody in connection with the murder that took place at Elappully in the district on April 15.
Subair was murdered allegedly by RSS workers, five months after a local sangh parivar leader S Sanjith was murdered in the same area allegedly by Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI) activists.
Subair was returning home from a mosque with his father when his bike was rammed down by the attackers' car. He had been hacked to death.
A day later, S K Sreenivasan (45), a former district leader and office-bearer of RSS, was murdered by a six-member gang at his motorbike shop in Melamuri near here, allegedly in retaliation to Subair's killing. The incident occurred less than 24 hours after PFI leader Subair was killed allegedly by RSS workers in a village near here.
The back-to-back killings involving BJP/RSS-SDPI/PFI is a second such incident in the past few months in Kerala. Earlier, in December last year in Alappuzha, an SDPI leader and a BJP leader were murdered within 24 hours.
Meanwhile, police have also arrested a key conspirator in the Sanjith murder case, who was allegedly absconding after that murder case in November last year.
"We have arrested Bava (57) from the district. He was a school teacher and was absconding after the murder," a police official told PTI.
