Crude Bombs Thrown At Left Leader, BJP Parliamentarian Homes In Kerala

A crude bomb was thrown at the house of a BJP parliamentarian in Kerala hours after a similar attack on the house of a Left party legislator was reported to the police on Friday night. The family of BJP parliamentarian V Muraleedharan were sleeping at their ancestral house at Thalassery in Kannur district when they were attacked at midnight. No one was injured.

Mr Muraleedharan alleged that the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM was behind the attack.

"My sister, brother-in-law and their daughter were in the house when the attack took place," the BJP leader told news agency PTI.

The attack on the BJP leader's house came hours after another crude bomb was hurled at the house of CPM legislator AN Shamseer in the same town at 10 pm. The CPM leader alleged the BJP's ideological mentor Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or RSS was responsible for the attack.

Mr Shamseer said he was attending a peace meeting in Kannur to calm the tense situation after two women in their 40s entered the Sabarimala temple, when the attack happened. "This was an RSS conspiracy to instigate violence in the state. They intend to destroy the peaceful atmosphere of the state," he said, according to PTI.

Twenty people have been detained in connection with the attacks, the police said.

Some people also set fire to an office of the RSS at Pariyaram in Kannur this morning, police sources said.

The attacks come amid tension over entry of women to the Sabarimala temple, which both the BJP and the Congress also oppose. The Left government led by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has said it will do everything in its power to follow a Supreme Court order that overturned a decades-old ban on entry of women of menstruating age into the shrine of Lord Ayyappa.

Violence had broken out across Kerala on Wednesday when two women entered the temple and walked into history.

The police have filed 801 cases related to the violence that broke out after various Hindu groups called for a state-wide shutdown of shops and other establishments on Wednesday to protest against the entry of the women.