THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: As the statewide strike by BJP in Kerala evoked mixed response from public on Friday, debates continue unabated over the real reasons that haunted the 49-year-old Venugopalan Nair who self-immolated in front of BJP's protest venue at secretariat on early Thursday morning.In an early morning news conference at CPM district committee office here, Devasom minister Kadakampally Surendran said the BJP harthal was a ploy by the saffron party to make a martyr out of a daily-wage labourer who self-immolated owing to purely personal reasons. "Venugopalan Nair has no political connections and he in his death statement to the magistrate clearly showed that there was no connection between Sabarimala issue and his death. The BJP, as I always said, is trying to create a martyr for fuelling their unnecessary strike over entry of women to Sabarimala," Kadakampally said. He also stated that the mental condition of Venugopalan Nair was said to be not that sound. People have rejected their harthal calls," he said.Meanwhile, BJP state general secretary M T Ramesh squarely denied the narratives of the state police and the minister. "There is no reason to believe that Veugopalan Nair gave a death statement which discredit the truth to which we were witnesses. It's impossible to believe that he gave a death statement at all. Though the magistrate had visited the hospital on Friday morning, he had go back without recording the same. Till the death of Venugopalan Nair, both his brothers were outside the ICU. They are unaware of anybody else having visited their brother to record the statement. We are not willing to believe the government narrative," he said.According to Ramesh, the BJP would stick to its opinion and believed that Venugopalan Nair did kill himself out of his angst and protest against the Sabarimala developments. "Not just BJP leader C K Padmanabhan, but the police officials too were witness to the words of Venugopalan Nair that he torched himself up for the cause of lord Ayyappa," Ramesh claimed.He also lightened the grouse expressed by Mohan Lal fans against BJP calling the flash harthal on the very releasing day of the superstar’s much awaited big-budget film ' Odiyan '.

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