Tearful adieu to SFI leader

Dheeraj Rajendran, Students Federation of India (SFI) activist and a seventh semester BTech student at the Idukki Government Engineering College, Painavu, who was stabbed to death allegedly by Youth C

Dheeraj Rajendran, Students Federation of India (SFI) activist and a seventh semester BTech student at the Idukki Government Engineering College, Painavu, who was stabbed to death allegedly by Youth Congress workers on Monday, was cremated early on Wednesday.

Dheeraj’s brother Advaith lit the funeral pyre by 2 a.m. The body was cremated in an eight-cent plot adjoining his house, which the CPI(M) has agreed to purchase for constructing a memorial to him.

Dheeraj’s mother Pushkala, who works as a nurse, and father Rajendran, an LIC agent,were inconsolable when his body was taken to the house. He had called them a day before his death. Local people and Communist Party of India (Marxist) workers were present in large numbers when his body was brought from Idukki. The procession carrying Dheeraj’s body from Idukki reached Kannur around 11p.m. on Tuesday. It was past midnight when the body was brought to his house at Palakulangara at Trichambaram in Taliparamba.