Thiruvananthapuram airport CISF in a tight spot after bullets were found in CPI(M) politburo member Pinarayi Vijayan’s bag on Friday.
CHENNAI/THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The case of the Chennai airport security confiscating five live bullets from the cabin baggage of CPI (M) politburo member Pinarayi Vijayan on Friday is getting curiouser and curiouser.
With the preliminary inquiry of CISF manning the Thiruvananthapuram airport suggesting that no bullets were found in Vijayan’s baggage before he boarded a Paramount Airways flight at 11.30 am to Chennai (before he was to take a Jet Airways flight to Delhi at 5.30 pm), many questions have cropped up.
Is the CISF at the Thiruvananthapuram airport trying to cover up a security lapse? Or, if the CISF initial report is true, where did Vijayan get the bullets from, after he left Thiruvananthapuram and before he was to leave Chennai for Delhi? By admitting that there were bullets in his baggage, Vijayan has sought to negate the second question, which means more difficult explanations for the Thiruvananthapuram airport security.
Vijayan said he had left the .38 calibre bullets in his bag after removing them from the revolver before producing it for renewal of the licence. “There has been a threat to my life,” he said. Kerala chief minister VS Achuthanandan added: “Our leaders had been facing threat and he (Vijayan) procured the revolver on the advice of the home department.”
Hailing from Kannur, the hotbed of violent politics in Kerala, Vijayan was in the hit list of CPI (M)’s political opponents, according to a 1994 intelligence report. For the CPI (M), which had fought many battles with the Congress in the north earlier, the rise of the RSS and fundamentalist groups has brought in new enemies.
Top CPI (M) leaders EP Jayarajan and P Jayarajan have survived attempts on life. EP Jayarajan, returning from New Delhi after a central committee meeting on April 12, 1995, was shot at in a running train in AP. P Jayarajan was hacked at his home in the wee hours of August 25, 1999, by suspected RSS men.
For the Congress, the bullet-in-the-bag incident has come as a shot in the arm. AICC member Ramesh Chennithala demanded a thorough probe into the security lapse at Thiruvananthapuram airport and asked: “How safe is the common man, when even Pinarayi (Vijayan) can move around only with a gun? Who is he scared of? Or, who is he trying to scare?”
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