Fifteen men linked to the now-banned Popular Front of India (PFI) were sentenced to death by a Kerala court on Tuesday in a case relating to the murder of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) politician Ranjith Srinivasan.
The court ruled that the accused identified as Nizam, Ajmal, Anoop, Moammed Aslam, Abdul Salam alias Salam Ponnad, Abdul Salam, Saffaruddin and Manshad were directly involved in the killing of Srinivasan, while four others were found guilty of murder for coming to the scene with lethal weapons.
Apart from these 12, three others were convicted of conspiracy to murder.
The prosecution argued that the accused constituted a “trained killer squad” and sought maximum sentence for them. The prosecution further said that the killing of Srinivasan should be within the ambit of “rarest of the rare” of crimes because the BJP politician was killed in front of his mother, infant and wife.
Meanwhile, lawyers for the accused asked the court to be lenient, saying it was not the "rarest of the rare" crime as similar murders had happened before.
The BJP's OBC (Other Backward Class) wing leader Srinivasan was attacked and killed at his home in Alappuzha district of Kerala on 19 December. His murder was followed by that of KS Shaan of the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI), an affiliate of the PFI.