Sharp shooters of Tamil Nadu police killed five people, alleged to be robbers who were involved in two daylight bank robberies in Chennai in the early hours of Thursday. Residents of Velachery, a city suburb, woke up to a bloody morning hearing frequent gun shots and screaming as two police inspectors were injured in the exchange of fire.
Those killed have been identified as Chandrika Ray, Harish Kumar, Vinay Prasad, Vinod Kumar and Abhay Kumar (all hailing from Bihar). Chennai Police Commissioner JK Tripathi, later told reporters that his team zeroed in on the house where the robbers were hiding following a tip-off.
“We had circulated the video image of one of the robbers which we collected from the CCTV of a public sector bank branch where he had gone for a reconnaissance mission to assess the level of security. The image was shown to officials and employees of the bank branches who identified him immediately,” said Tripathi.
Branches of Bank of Baroda and Indian Overseas Bank were robbed by the gang at gun point and made away with Rs33 lakh on January 23 and February 21 respectively. “There were no armed guards or CCTV system in both the branches and this helped the robbers to get away with the loot,” he said.
Following the distribution of the picture of one of the robbers, the police got some valuable information from their sources. “Though the police team asked them to surrender, they started indiscriminate firing. The police retaliated in self-defence and this led to the casualties. The identity of the robbers was confirmed through voters ID card and driving licences on their person,” said the commissioner.
But activists of various human right organisations termed the encounter as cold-blooded murder. “The police claim that they fired in self-defence. But no law in this country has given them the licence to kill. What they should have done is to immobilise the alleged robbers instead of slaughtering them,” said Ossie Fernadez, president, Human Right Foundation (HRF).
He said a close examination of the dead bodies would prove that the shots were fired from point blank region. “We have information that the youth were killed in different places and the dead bodies were brought to Velachery and dumped there,” said an activist of the HRF.
The government has ordered a magisterial inquiry into the killings. Human right activists described the killings as a birth day gift from the police to Jayalalithaa who will celebrate her 64th birth day on February 24.
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