Hate speech: Police serve polygraph notice on CPI(M) leader

Police on Wednesday served a notice on CPI(M) leader M M Mani seeking his response to appear for a polygraph test as part of investigations in connection with his controversial speech that his party had done to death political rivals in the past.

The notice, served to Mani at his home at Kunjithanni, asked him to let the investigators know within a week whether he was willing to undergo the polygraph test, police said.

Police had registered a criminal case and started a fresh probe into the murder of an INTUC activist in Idukki district 30 years ago in the light of Mani's speech.

While addressing a public meeting at Manakkad near Thodupuzha in the district a few months ago, Mani said his party had in the 1980s drawn up a list of political rivals to be eliminated and executed that, which sparked a raging controversy within and outside the state.

With Mani's speech causing deep embarrassment to even the central leadership of the CPI(M), he was removed as the CPI-M Idukki district secretary and suspended from the state committee in July last.

Mani's speech dealt a severe blow to the party's image in the state as it came when the CPI(M) was under a cloud over the murder of rebel Marxist and Revolutionary Marxist Party leader T P Chandrasekharan and was locked in a fierce fight with the ruling Congress-led UDF in an Assembly bypoll.

The party, however, consistently held that physical annihilation of foes has never been its policy.

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