Three years ago, Muraleedharan, then in the Congress, was alleged to have sent the goons who attacked two former KPCC general secretaries who were opposing him, Rajmohan Unnithan and Saratchandra Prasad, when they arrived for a party meeting at the KPCC headquarters. The meeting to be chaired by A K Antony, had been called to discuss the party’s Lok Sabha poll debacle that year. The waiting goons had emerged to thrash the duo right in front of the KPCC office as senior party leaders watched.

“He is my son, he could not have been behind this,” a visibly shaken Karunakaran said after the mayhem. Karunakaran declined to comment on Muraleedharan's public assertion earlier that he and his father were parting ways for good, since the latter was going to the Congress. “He is my son, he will continue to go with me, I am sure he will,” Karunakaran maintained.

Karunakaran’s refusal to point a finger at his son has now put his camp followers in a fix. “We cannot believe Muraleedharan would do this to us. We need to wait for the police to find out who did it,” a senior Karunakaran aide insisted.