Sasikala Teacher booked for promoting enmity after speech on Gauri Lankesh murder

The Kerala police have registered two separate cases against Hindu Aikya Vedi Kerala state president KP Sasikala. This comes two days after the right-wing leader’s controversial speech on the murder of slain journalist-activist Gauri Lankesh.

The Paravur police station booked Sasikala Teacher, as she is popularly known, under IPC section 153 A (Promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc., and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony). This was based on a complaint filed by Congress MLA VD Satheesan for her speech on Saturday.

Sasikala Teacher’s public speech at an event in North Paravur on Saturday was looked at by many as a threat to writers. In her speech, she had asked all secular writers in Kerala to conduct a ‘Mrityunjaya Homam’ - a ritual to avoid untimely death. While she had accused the Congress government in Karnataka of not catching the culprits in Gauri Lankesh’s murder, Sasikala stated that the RSS has been dragged in because the journalist had written against the organisation.   

The right-wing leader also went on to say if RSS had gone ahead and killed writers antagonizing the organisation, India would be wiped out of writers. "Ninety out of 100 are against RSS. If RSS started killing them, this race of writers would be wiped out. RSS knows that it becomes stronger every time they write,” she said.

Meanwhlile, the Kozhikode Kasaba police station have also booked Sasikala Teacher for promoting enmity between groups for her speech in 2006 at Muthalakkulam in Kozhikode.

An FIR was first registered in 2016 based on a complaint by government pleader C Shukkur at Hosdurg of Kasaragod district. Later the case was handed over to the Kasaba police. After the police went through the CDs of Sasikala’s 2006 speech, a case was registered on Monday.

Her speech was allegedly against Muslims and was made following the 2003 communal attack at Marad beach near Kozhikode, where nine people were killed in a mob attack. Eight of the nine killed were Hindus. The Marad massacre, the worst communal attack Kerala has witnessed, was in response to a similar attack that took place at the same place the previous year, where five people were killed.

In the past, Sasikala Teacher’s speeches have been criticised for being highly inflammatory and communal.