A letter warning of dire consequences if she continued to criticise Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan was delivered to Revolutionary Marxist Party MLA K K Rema at her room in the MLA hostel in Thiruvananthapuram. The letter was found in the letter box of the MLA hostel. Though she found the letter only on Friday, the letter dispatched from Kannur was dated July 15. It was signed 'Payyannur comrades".
Rema, who has been in Thiruvananthapuram for the Assembly session, met State Police Chief Anil Kant and handed over the letter before leaving for Kozhikode on Friday. The Assembly session had ended on July 21.
The handwritten letter begins in a nasty tone, addressing her "edi reme". It begins with a flurry of questions. Clearly, it was written before CPM MLA M M Mani withdrew his "widowhood is her fate' remark. "You want Manichettan (M M Mani) to apologise to you? Have you no shame to make such a demand? Do you have any idea about this great organisation called the CPM? Have you heard of the Onchiyam revolutionaries? Go and ask your father, he might know. If you had for a moment thought about the Onchiyam martyrs, would you have so shamefully secured Congress votes and become an MLA? What else should we call you, other than a traitor," the letter says.
Like M M Mani, "Payyannur comrades", too, deny the CPM role in T P Chandrasekharan's killing. "It was done by some other mysterious forces who were fishing in troubled waters," the letter said. Mani had said in the Assembly that the CPM was not responsible for Chandraekharan's murder.
The letter warns Rema to be careful if she is intent on vilifying the Chief Minister and other senior CPM leaders to get the applause of the Congress. The letter describes the Chief Minister as "our beloved son". "Even if we lose power, we will be forced to do something," the letter says.
The letter also asks Congress leaders like V D Satheesan, K Muraleedharan and K C Venugopal to be on guard. "Hope you guys will be coming to Onchiyam. We have something in store for you," the letter says.
Rema told Onmanorama that she had received such threats before and every time she had informed the police. "But this is the first time that I am handing over a complaint directly to the DGP," Rema said. She said no action was taken on the basis of her earlier complaints. "I have no idea whether even a minor probe was initiated," she said and added: "I know nothing will come of this, too. But I filed a complaint because they should not ask me later why I had not complained."
She said that the CPM threats had virtually ceased during the last three years. “But it had suddenly intensified during the Assembly session that just concluded,” Rema said.
It was in the first week of July that senior CPM leader Elamaram Kareem said in a public event that Rema should not take it too much into her head that she holds an MLA post. "She is challenging the CPM by aligning with class enemies. The MLA post is a reward she got for betraying the party," Kareem said while speaking at a CPM programme conducted at Onchiyam in memory of C H Ashokan who was an accused in the murder of T P Chandrasekharan.
CPM's Kozhikode district secretary P Mohanan repeated what Kareem said. Then, inside the Assembly, M M Mani made an insensitive comment about her widowhood which Speaker M B Rajesh ruled was improper and offensive.
"If their intention is to scare me, I am not in the least deterred. I will continue to criticise the CPM," Rema said.
