By Express News Service

KASARGOD: After Manju -- the wife of the accused A Peethambaran -- said the murder of Youth Congress workers cannot happen without the knowledge of CPM, a video of a combative speech by CPM district secretariat member V P P Mustafa made from the AKG Club at Kalliyot on January 7, two days after Sarath Lal allegedly broke the arm of Peethambaran has surfaced. The video has further queered the pitch for the Marxist party.

Mustafa said, “We have touched the nadir of our patience. If you come again to stamp us down, the CPM will erupt from the hell like a rocket and then, whether it is Govindan Nair or Baburaj... not one will be spared. They will be blown to smithereens. There will be nothing left to pick up and place on the pyre,” he said. “Don’t make us return. The Congress workers who are listening and other who are not listening and the Bekal SI should tell this is what the CPM has said.”

“Whether you (Bekal police) have registered a case or haven’t arrested the accused, you know the behaviour and style of the CPM. You should tell them. We are not Gandhian,” he said in the cropped video. District Congress president Hakkim Kunnil said there was a build-up to the murder of Kripesh and Sarath Lal. “The threats were reflected also on social media,” he said.

When contacted, Mustafa, a young leader of the district, said the video of his speech was edited out to give an impression that it was a call for violence. “I had clearly said that the CPM supporters were at the receiving end of a series of violence from the Congress at Kalliyot.

The assault on Peethambaran really tested our patience. But in the speech I said the CPM had forgiven the attack till now and warned them not to come at us again,” he said.He said in the assault on Peethambaran, police had registered an attempt to murder case and arrested the accused, including Sarath Lal. After that there were no attack on CPM establishment or supporters by the Congress, and the CPM too let it go, he said.

“Peethambaran is a good organiser of the CPM, and when the party did not take any step to retaliate, he may have taken it upon himself to avenge the assault on him,” Mustafa said.On his choice of words in the speech, Mustafa explained it away by saying it was rhetorical, and was delivered just two days after the assault on Peethambaran.