Bomb hurled at BJP leader’s house in Kannur's CPM bastion; police call it political violence

Kasaragod: The three-year lull in bomb attacks on the houses of BJP and CPM workers in Kannur district was shattered in the early hours of Thursday, when the house of a BJP leader in Cherukunnu panchayat came under attack. The target was the house of K Biju (44), general secretary of the BJP's Kalliasseri Assembly constituency committee. Around 2.30 am, a bomb exploded at his house, less than 200 metres from the Kannapuram police station, at Cherukunnu Thara.

"I live with my aged parents. They were scared due to the loud explosion that shook our house," Biju told Onmanorama. His father, Narayanan (78), has already lost four toes to diabetes, and his mother, Mohini (70), suffers from hypertension. They were not expecting an attack and did not know where the sound came from. "Only when I saw steel shards on the sit-out did I realise it was a bomb attack," said Biju. The concrete roof and the show wall of the sitout were damaged, and two window panes were shattered.

Police arrived within 15 minutes. Kannappuram SHO Mahesh Kandambeth said political enmity was the only visible motive for the attack. The CCTV cameras at his house had stopped working, and so the police could not immediately identify the people who hurled the bomb. But the house was less than 200 metres from the police station.

Biju, who runs a car workshop in Cherukunnu Thara, which is the town for both the Cherukunnu panchayat and the Kannappuram panchayat, believes the attack was meant to terrorise those shifting allegiance to the BJP. "Recently, 15 people from Kavinisseri, a CPM bastion, joined us. One of them, Haridas, resigned from the CPM-controlled Indian Coffee House and hoisted the BJP flag at Kavinisseri for the first time. That angered the CPM," he said.

Cherukunnu and Kannappuram are CPM strongholds. In the 2020 local body polls, the Left won 26 of 27 wards across the two panchayats. The Congress party won one seat in the Cherukunnu panchayat.

Bomb attacks and truce
Kannur’s political rivalries have long been fought with crude bombs. In October 2016, suspected BJP-RSS workers hurled explosives at the house of A Ashokan, the Kunnathuparambu block panchayat president who had quit the BJP ahead of the local body election in December 2015. The government had given him protection. He and his gunman were injured in the attack.

It was around this time that spiritual leader Sri M quietly initiated backchannel talks between CPM and BJP leaders, an unusual peace effort that succeeded in reducing political killings and retaliatory bombings for a while.

But the truce frayed during the Sabarimala protests of 2018-19. Violence flared across Kannur and Kasaragod. In January 2019, a bomb was thrown at the Thalassery house of BJP district secretary N Haridas. And in the subsequent attack, his house was vandalised and his daughter, wife, and aunt were injured. On the same day, a former BJP councillor, Ganesh, was hacked in Kasaragod.
Even after the protests subsided, bombs returned sporadically. On July 12, 2022, an explosive was hurled at the RSS office in Payyannur. Since then, attacks on homes and offices declined, though temple festivals and political processions in Thalassery and Kuthuparamba continued to turn violent.

But even when the blasts stopped targeting opponents, they sometimes turned on their makers. On August 30, a blast flattened a house and killed a person at Keezhara, less than 3km from Biju's house. Police said an "illegal firecracker unit" was run from the house, and the deceased was a firecracker maker. But neighbours and the panchayat ward member had no inkling of it.

In April 2024, during the Lok Sabha campaign, an improvised explosive device (IED) went off while being assembled in Panoor, another CPM bastion in Kannur district, killing one CPM worker and critically injuring two others.

A month later, CPM state secretary M V Govindan inaugurated a memorial in Panoor for two party workers killed while making bombs back in 2015. Of late, temple festivals and processions in Kannur's Thalassery and Kuthuparamba assembly segments are increasingly turning political, leading to violent clashes. Political observers say the district is warming up to the upcoming local body elections.