The Kerala Police on Wednesday arrested five persons in connection with the murder of Bharatiya Janata Party leader Renjith Sreenivasan, The News Minute reported.

“The arrested persons were not part of the attack team,” said Additional Director General of Police Vijay Sakhare. “But they provided all logistical support to the attackers and participated in the conspiracy.”

Sreenivasan, the state secretary of the party’s Other Backward Class unit, was stabbed by several assailants in Alappuzha, Kerala, on Sunday. He died on his way to the hospital.

Twelve hours before Sreenivasan’s death, Social Democratic Party of India State Secretary KS Shan was killed in the same district. On Monday, the police had arrested two accused people in connection with Shan’s murder.

Sakhare on Wednesday said that the five arrested persons for the BJP leader’s murder were Social Democratic Party of India sympathisers. “There is a larger conspiracy behind [the] killings of Sreenivasan and Shan,” he said.

Sakhare added that the arrests were good progress in the investigation, The News Minute reported.

On Monday, Sakhare had claimed that the police had “concrete clues” and leads about 12 persons allegedly involved in Sreenivasan’s killing and that their identities were being verified.

Meanwhile, Union Minister V Muraleedharan on Sunday claimed that according to information he had received, the attack on the BJP leader was the “handy work of [an] Islamic terrorist group”.