Senior Congress leader Ramesh Chennithala has said the action of Kerala police in registering case against a media person who exposed the examination fraud and chickenery of SFI leaders is undemocratic. This is a part of the strategy of silencing the dissenting voice, he said.

Speaking to media persons here on Sunday,

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Chennithala said Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan led government is also treading the same path as that of the Modi Government in suppressing the freedom of expression.

Criticising the police for its inability to arrest former SFI leader Vidya, who produced fake experience  certificate to get a teaching job, Chennithala said Pinarayi Vijayan’s cops are asking if anyone has seen Vidya after hiding her.

The police should not stoop to such a level. They should not become a tool of the government and the SFI, Chennithala said.

He said that CPI-M State Secretary MV Govindan, who opens his mouth only to justify the corrupt and the extortionists, has come to justify the exam fraudsters as well. Govindan’s  style of justifying the case against the media persons is close to the Sangh Parivar style, he said.

Action taken against media  persons is unacceptable. The case against the journalist who brought the news to the public is a disgrace to the  police force itself, Ramesh Chennithala   added.

The Kerala police on Saturday  booked Akhila Nandakumar, a reporter with Malayalam news channel Asianet News, on a complaint filed by PM Arsho, state secretary of the Students’ Federation of India (SFI, the student wing of the CPI-M.

The complaint was against a news report by Akhila alleging that Arsho, an MA Archaeology student at Maharaja’s College Ernakulam, had passed all his exams without appearing for them. Akhila, who is the Chief Reporter of Asianet News, Kochi, has been named the fifth accused in the case.

Arsho was mired in a controversy after it was alleged he had cleared his third semester exams without writing a single paper. However, he later said that he was not in Ernakulam the time so he had not written any of the papers. The college authorities then stated that it happened due to a technical glitch at the National Informatics Centre (NIC).

Opposition Leader VD Satheesan has condemned the police action of filing the case against Akhila. He said the police action is to  conceal a  serious crime.This cannot be accepted in any way, he said.

Former Kerala High Court judge, Justice Kemal Pasha has criticized the action of filing a case against Asianet News Chief Reporter Akhila Nandakumar. He said the case against Akhila can only be viewed as media suppression by the government.

However, defending the police action in having filed a case against journalist Akhila Nadakumar, MV Govindan said the people should actually appreciate the decision of the government. “We won’t spare the media that run fake campaigns against the party or its student wing,” said MV Govindan.

The CPI-M on many occasions termed the Central government’s actions against media as totalitarian. One of the issues discussed by the CPI-M Politburo in the first week of June 2017 was related to the suppression of press freedom in the country.