Kozhikode: Kozhikode Medical College police on Saturday arrested 93-year-old human rights activist Ayinoor Vasu popularly known as 'GROW' Vasu in connection with protests over the alleged extrajudicial police killings of two Maoists seven years ago.
He has been arrested in connection with the protests over the Nilambur encounter, said Medical College station house officer inspector Benny Lal M L.
The police were executing a long-pending warrant against GROW Vasu in connection with a case registered over a protest in front of the mortuary of the medical college in November 2016.
He was charged with unlawful assembly and obstructing police in the discharge of duty.
An officer said the activist and trade union leader said he would argue the case on his own and refused to apply for bail.
On November 24, 2016, Kerala police shot dead Koppam Devarajan, a central committee member of CPI (Maoist), and Ajitha alias Kaveri in Padukka forest in the Karulai range of the Nilambur South division.
When their bodies were shifted to Kozhikode Medical College, a group of activists, including Vasu held protests accusing the police of staging the encounter.
Vasu had demanded a judicial inquiry into the killings. "We don't know what happened. The forest area (15 km from Padukka forest station) had been cordoned off and even reporters were not allowed to go there," Vasu had told Manorama News from in front of the mortuary then.
In the 1960s, Vasu was part of the Naxalite movement. He was imprisoned for seven years in Kannur Central Prison after he was arrested in the Thirunelli Naxalite action of 1970, in which Naxal leader Arikkad Varghese was killed.
In the 1980s, he had joined hands with the Gwalior Rayons Organisation of Workers (GROW), to demand the closure of the Gwalior Rayons factory at Mavoor, saying it was polluting the Chaliyar river.
Since then he came to be known as GROW Vasu.
