In a statement issued here today at the end of the State secretariat meeting, the party made that categorical demand, saying it was necessitated by the mystery surrounding the fresh revelations about the slaying of Varghese. There had been several such deaths, both before and after Varghese, but an inquiry was essential to prevent them in future, the secretariat reasoned.

It recalled that only CPM and Desabhimani had then brought out the truth of the murder of Varghese when many politicians said Varghese was killed in an encounter with the police. Several Naxal leaders had endorsed it and the media propagated it.

It was late E M S Namboodiripad who visited the site of themurder and demanded a judicial inquiry, both within and outside the Assembly. The statement said that even though the party was strongly opposed to the Naxalite politics of annihilation, it had always condemned the brutal repression of Naxalites and advocated that they should be disposed of politically and in accordance with law. The party had been guided in this by Lenin's own rejection of his brother's Left fundamentalism.

The secretariat wondered why newspapers -- Malayala Manorama,

Mathrubhumi, The Indian Express -- did not investigate the matter even when there was no Press censorship or other restrictions, as in the Emergency. The main newspapers had deliberately propagated that Varghese was killed in an encounter. The criticism of the Left Democratic Front Government by the media and disintegrated warring Naxal groups on the basis of a confession made by a constable was strange.

The episode had attracted so much attention following constable Ramachandran Nair's confession that it was hewho shot at Varghese for fear of reprisal from his superior officer.

Then the question would be why had Vasu, a compatriot of Varghese, suppressed the constable's confession for decades. Why such an information was not provided even to the CPM-led governments that took over in 1980 and 1987, the secretariat asked.

It noted that the suppression or destruction of evidence of a murder was as punishable a crime as murder itself. Hence, newspapers which spread falsehoods about the murder and others who suppressed facts were guilty, though in varying degrees.

ANTI-BJP FRONT:

The statement did not condemn the killings in Panur. But it called for developing a strong front against the BJP-led Government at the Centre which was ``going ahead with a programme of attacks against secularism and religious minorities''. It referred to BJP's communalisation of education and the resistance put up by its own allies against it.

A VHP leader's justification of the rape of nuns in Jhabua saying it was inretaliation for religious conversions showed that the Sangh Parivar would go to any extent to justify any heinous crime.

The statement criticised economic policies of the Centre, saying they were responsible for the price rise. The Congress-led UDF was, in the meantime, organising agitations against the LDF Government which was trying to tackle price rise by strengthening public distribution, it said.