Musings: 'Sympathy wave strategy’ to win elections
'Sympathy wave’ is a well-proven strategy to win elections. Some veterans in the trade would go to any extent to create this `wave’ during the elections. Here is a real story where the party leader had plotted a knife attack and the worker volunteered to get himself stabbed. Unfortunately, the stab went too deep and the volunteer died. I am reminded of this 2001 story in Tamil Nadu while reading the declaration of a BJP activist following the murder of a CPI(M) activist at Trichur. He said the BJP had nothing to do with the recent murder of the CPM cadre in Trichur, and probably this was a strategy by CPM itself to win seats in the upcoming Panchayat election in Kerala.
The 2001 murder story below.
Murder `strategy’ to win elections
By Thomas Kanamala
'SYMPATHY wave’ can win elections. Unscrupulous politicians will go to any extent to create this `wave’ including murder to win election – even if it is just a Panchayat member election.
A case study from Tamil Nadu reported 23 years ago.
During a hotly contested election to the Thirupachethy Panchayat (Sivaganga) in 2001, one of the candidates, Ramalingam, learnt that his defeat was certain, as the villagers knew him too well. His close confidents advised that he could win only if voters' sympathy was somehow turned in his favour. What better way than staging a murder attempt on one of his well-known supporters, and giving it maximum publicity!
The candidates’ cousin T.Ganesan with his henchmen after due deliberations chose a leading campaigner Vellaisamy to be the victim of the proposed attack by 'opposition parties’.
An expert knife man among the group volunteered to cause a deep injury to the victim without causing any damage on the night of October 15, 2001, a few days before election day. But the plan misfired.
Vellaiswamy lost his nerve in the last minute and while ducking the knife from close quarters, his vitals were damaged. He was brought dead to the local government hospital.
Undeterred by the unexpected turn of events, Ramalingam and others, as plotted earlier, decided to exploit the incident to their advantage. Posters appeared within hours all over the village about the brutal murder and street corner protests were organized urging the police to arrest the culprits.
A complaint was lodged to the police against the rival candidate Selvam and others for the murderous attack. While taking the stab victim to the hospital in a jeep, the perpetrators of the crime had cried out loud that their political rival Selvam and others had stabbed Vellaisamy.
The local police registered a case of conspiracy and murder against G. Selvam G.Prabhakaran, S.Dhanabalan, C. Muthu, P. Karthikeyan, N.Sethupillai, S.Kesavan and S. Duraisamy. The motive for the murder was rivalry due to the Panchayat election.
But the police could not find a shred of credible evidence despite their best efforts. As some of the accused persons found that the case was moving in the wrong direction, a petition was moved on their behalf in the Madras High Court seeking a CBCID investigation into the case. The Court on February 26, 2002 directed the CBCID to take up the case.
Accordingly, Inspector V.Balasubramnian took up the investigation on August 22, 2002. His investigation has revealed that Selvam and others, cited as accused in the FIR, are innocent. He has identified Ramalingam, Araikattai Rajaram, Ganesan, Murugan, Vinothkumar, T.R. Ganesan and Vicky Vignesh were the real culprits. Among them, Vinothkumar and T.R. Ganesan were arrested on December 15, 2002. Vicky was arrested on February 18, 2003. Ramalingam, Ganesan and Murugan had obtained anticipatory bail from the Madras High Court on January 13, 2003. The anticipatory bail petitions of Araikattai Rajaram, Ravikumar, Senthilkumar, Udaiyar Ganesan and U.Senthil were dismissed by the High Court on March 26, 2003.
The Sivaganga sessions court on December 07, 2010 convicted all of them to various prison terms from two years to life imprisonment. The Madras High Court, on appeal, acquitted all the accused on Sep 1, 2015 with orders to return the fines any as well, if they had paid.
