When the court pronounced the conviction last week, the CPI (M) had taken the outcome as a relief as several of its local functionaries who figured as accused were acquitted.
The party activists sentenced to life imprisonment were P K Kunhanandan, an area committee member from Panur in Kannur district, K C Ramachandran, a local committee secretary and Manoj, a branch secretary.
Chandrasekharan, a former CPI (M) wholetimer, was hacked to death by a seven-member gang on May 4, 2012 under cover of darkness.
The killers had come in a hired car and fled after hacking him to death, inflicting 51 cuts on his body.
The murder cast a shadow on the CPI (M) in the state firmly controlled by state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan with not only political rivals but its own senior leader V S Achuthanandan using it as a weapon to attack the internal foes.
Reacting to the sentence, Chandrasekharan's widow K K Rema said it came as relief to a certain extent in view of CPI (M) leaders' claim that their party had no involvement in the conspiracy to annihilate her husband.
