Unni Vengeri, incumbent president of Changaroth grama panchayat near Perambra in Kozhikode district, has filed a complaint with the Deputy Superintendent of Police, Perambra, accusing Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) workers of demeaning his caste during a victory celebration taken out on December 13 after the declaration of the local body poll results.
In the complaint filed on Tuesday (December 16), Mr. Vengeri, who is from the Left Democratic Front (LDF), said that after the United Democratic Front (UDF) captured power in the panchayat, five of the IUML workers and 25 others barged into the panchayat office. They erected flags of the Congress and the IUML there and threw away some of the furniture kept in the office. The group later resorted to a clean-up act after spraying cow dung water on the premises, while raising abusive slogans. Visuals of the incident were later circulated on social media.
Mr. Vengeri, who belongs to the Scheduled Caste (SC), claimed that the IUML workers did it to demean him and others belonging to his community and to express their displeasure over his status as the panchayat president. He said that though the UDF had come to power in some other panchayats in Perambra, similar acts were not performed at any of those places. Mr. Vengeri also alleged that a Facebook profile titled Praveen Kumar Wayanad had circulated the video. In the 2020-25 period, the post of panchayat president in Changaroth was reserved for the SC community. Mr. Vengeri is an area committee member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).
Meanwhile, LDF activists staged a protest against the episode in the evening. However, IUML local leaders denied the allegations and claimed it was a “symbolic protest” to show that the “corrupt LDF was wiped out of power.”
Published – December 16, 2025 09:24 pm IST
