The judicial commission probing Kerala’s worst communal massacre in Marad in 2003 has severely indicted almost every arm of the Congress-led United Democratic Front Government: politicians, police officers and top bureaucrats.

It has also found that the massacre was a planned conspiracy involving extremist organizations, including those funded from abroad, organisations, it said, successive state governments have used to cultivate “vote banks.”

And that at least one senior politician belonging to the Muslim League, part of the ruling Congress-led front, had advance knowledge of the conspiracy.

The report of the commission, set up in 2004 and headed by District Judge Thomas P Joseph, has been kept under wraps by the state government which received it two months ago. It has been accessed by The Indian Express.

The report asks the state government—which declined to allow a CBI probe—to hand over the investigation to a special investigation team. Its reason: the state police not only botched up investigation, it planted false leads and avoided looking at the wider conspiracy.

Marad, a sleepy fishing village off Kozhikode, hit headlines on January 3, 2002 when Hindu and Muslim extremist elements were quick to hijack what began as a trivial altercation over drinking water at the public tap.

A couple of Hindus and three Muslims lay dead the morning after.

This was the first communal eruption in this village of 275 Hindu and 191 Muslim families. The police did round up a few men, almost all were found to belong to mainstream political groups, Congress, CPI(M), BJP and the Muslim League. Police later found several had a dual identity as members of a rash of extremist outfits.

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