Superintendent of Police confirms Hemachandra Pandey, who was with Azad, was editor of a magazine.
Amid the controversy over the encounter of the CPI (Maoist) party politburo member Cherukuri Rajkumar alias Azad, the other person gunned down by the police in the exchange of fire has been identified as Hemachandra Pandey.
Pandey is believed to be a native of Uttarakhand and a journalist working for a Hindi newspaper. He is a post graduate from Nainital University.
On knowing that a journalist was one of the two killed in the encounter on Thursday night, several journalist groups in Andhra Pradesh condemned the police action and demanded a probe into the entire episode.
Meanwhile, rights groups continued to allege that the encounter was staged and the duo was picked from Nagpur before shooting them.
Late Saturday night, Nilesh Barni, SP of Pitarigarh, Uttarakhand confirmed that Pandey was the editor of magazine produced by a local farmers’ association in Uttarakhand.
Earlier, Uttarakhand police had denied the reports that Pandey was a journalist. According to them, Pandey went underground about four years ago and his whereabouts were not known even to his family members.
“Pandey has been active in CPI (ML) and we don’t have any information to say that he was a journalist. At least he was never a journalist in Uttarakhand and we don’t know if he was so in any other place,” Barnihad told DNA.
Sources said that Pandey’s family members would either collect his body from Hyderabad or will wait in Delhi for the body to be sent from Hyderabad.
Meanwhile, the mortal remains of Azad and Pandey have been brought to Hyderabad after conducting a post-mortem. Police did not allow anybody to pay tributes to the remains of Azad except his mother Karuna.
Several left wing activists, rights groups members and sympathisers gathered at the hospital where his body was kept.
However, police ensured that there were no visitors at the hospital.
Media too was kept away.
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