The video clipping showed the then CPI(M)'s local committee secretary at Onjiyam, Gopalakrishnan saying "Chandrasekharan will be beheaded" if he continued to create trouble for the party workers in the area.
The video containing the purported speech, made by the CPI(M) leader on February 5, 2010 months after Chandrasekharan left CPI(M) over ideological and organisational differences and floated Revolutionary Marxist Party, was beamed by Malayalam TV channels.
The speech made in the premises of a village temple, where a festival was on, referred to tension between CPI(M) and RMP workers prevailing in the area at that time.
"Now none of our party workers has been hurt. But if anyone suffers a scratch, we will behead Chandrasekharan. Our party in Onjiyam is capable of doing that," the local leader is purportedly seen saying in the video.
The video footage surfaced at a time when the party's image has taken a beating due to the controversial speech of its Idukki district leader M M Mani that CPI(M) had once drawn up a list of rivals and eliminated three of them in Idukki.
Mani was later removed as party district secretary by a red-faced CPI(M) leadership which is already deeply divided between factions owing allegiance to state party secretary Pinarayi Vijayan and veteran marxist V S Achuthanandan.
Several CPI-M workers have been arrested in the Chandrasekharan murder case. (More)