A local Communist Party of India-Marxist or CPM worker was left injured in an attack by a group of unidentified men in Kerala’s capital Thiruvananthapuram on Wednesday.

Police say the incident happened around 9:30 pm and the attackers who used sharp weapons are yet to be identified. The CPM worker, LS Shaju, is currently under treatment in an intensive care unit at a local hospital.

The police said it is still probing the incident to get further details.

The attack on Mr Shaju, a local office-bearer of the CPM, happened near his house and in the same area where a RSS activist was killed earlier this year in July, which led to massive protests by national leaders of the BJP in Thiruvananthapuram.

Incidents of political violence in Kerala have grabbed national headlines across the country in recent months with both left and the right-wing outfits accusing each other of increased hostilities.

Kerala has a long history of political violence. Police records of political murders between 2000 and 2017 impugn both the left and right-wing fronts. In the last 17 years, 85 CPM workers, 65 RSS or BJP workers, 11 workers of Congress and IUML each have been killed – mostly by their political rivals including CPM and RSS or BJP.

The BJP has alleged that since 2001, nearly 120 of its workers have been killed across Kerala by Left cadres – 14 of them, the party claims, in Kannur since the Left Democratic Front government came to power in May last year. The Left also blames the BJP and the RSS of a series of political murders and violent attacks on its supporters.