In a bizarre and bloody twist to the father-son standoff drama, a bunch of local goons led by NCP state president K Muraleedharan’s acolytes attacked and injured senior state and district level NCP leaders who were meeting to decide whether to follow K Karunakaran back into the Congress.

The goons, carrying sticks with NCP flags, were led by NCP leaders belonging to the Muraleedharan camp into a hall here where senior leaders of the other camp were holding the meeting.

The assailants, who came in a procession shouting slogans hailing Muraleedharan, barged into the venue. Those inside the hall, including a couple of district level women leaders, were surrounded, kicked and hit with sticks and chairs. Reporters and cameramen, too, were not spared, many were beaten up--two severely injured mediapersons are in hospital while many TV cameras and other equipment were damaged. The mayhem lasted over half an hour.

The goons and the NCP men also selectively pursued and assaulted many senior Karunakaran camp men, before destroying most of the furniture and lighting, the glass panes and parts of the hall's false roofing.

Before the attackers fled, their victims regrouped and caught two goons and half-a-dozen NCP men, who were badly thrashed and locked up in a room until the police arrived. Police sources later confirmed that the two were historysheeters — one of them reportedly confessed to having been contracted for the job by a local NCP leader.

This was Muraleedharan’s response to the attack: “Friction is bound to happen between two sections in a party that may have ideological differences. We will enquire about this. But this is nothing new, things like this have happened before too.” As an afterthought, Muraleedharan suggested that those who organised the meeting might have stage-managed the attack.

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