With four more people being arrested in connection with the murder of an RSS leader last month in Palakkad district, the total number of arrested accused in the case has reached 20, police said on Wednesday.
ADGP (Law and Order) Vijay Sakhare told PTI that of the four arrested on Tuesday evening, one was allegedly part of the six member group which carried out the killing of RSS leader S K Srinivasan (45) on April 16.
Two persons of the attacking party remain to be arrested, he said.
All the 20 arrested accused in the case are workers of or affiliated to the Popular Front of India (PFI) or its political offshoot Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI), Mr Sakhare further said.
According to the police, Srinivasan was killed in retaliation for the murder of PFI leader Subair (43) on April 15.
In the Subair murder case, meanwhile, seven arrests have been made till date and all the accused are RSS workers, Mr Sakhare said.
Three of the accused in that case were friends of RSS leader Sanjith, who was murdered in the district in November last year, and had allegedly carried out the attack on the PFI leader.
The remaining four were allegedly conspirators in the murder of Subair.
The police probe has revealed that Subair was killed to avenge the murder of Sanjith.
More arrests were likely in both the cases in the coming days and a charge sheet would be filed in each of them soon, the officer said.
Responding to a query on how the police plans to prevent such political revenge or retaliatory killings in future, Mr Sakhare said that while such pre-planned murders are very difficult to prevent, it always takes steps to ensure it does not flare up into a large scale communal issue.
"We come down very very heavily on those involved. Lot of arrests are made. We have a zero tolerance towards communal issues."
He further said that police was focusing on preventive policing in order to prevent such crimes from taking place and as part of that the steps the agency takes include -- keeping a check upon those having criminal antecedents, especially involvement in communal cases, surveilling them, opening their history sheets and booking them under the Kerala Anti-Social Activities (Prevention) Act.
"It is an ongoing process and we have increased it many fold after the Alappuzha murders," he added.
Mr Srinivasan, a former district leader and office-bearer of RSS, was attacked by a six-member gang at his motorbike shop in Melamuri near here on April 16, barely 24 hours after Subair was hacked to death at Elappully in the district while he was returning home along with his father after offering prayers in a mosque on April 15 afternoon.
The back-to-back killings involving BJP/RSS and SDPI/PFI is the second such incident in the past few months in Kerala.
In December last, a leader of the SDPI and a leader of the BJP were murdered in Alappuzha within 24 hours.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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