Naxal encounter was fake: NGO team

An independent fact-finding mission put together by four major civil liberties organisations of four southern states has concluded that the encounter killing of Naxalite Yellappa aka Dinakar was fake and the police have hidden facts.

The organisations—including People’s Union for Civil Liberties, Kerala unit (PUCL) , Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee (APCLC), Centre for Protection of Civil Liberties (CPCL), Tamil Nadu, and People’s Democratic Front (PDF), Karnataka—took a delegation of investigators to the place where the alleged Naxalite was killed in the Western Ghats in a village called Kulkunta Paligadde in Bisale Ghats of Subramanya police station limits on September 2.

The five-page-long report states that all the 14 bullets that were pumped into the body of Yellappa had passed through his body, which proves that he was killed in close range.

“According to the police records, the police had engaged a group of Naxalites on that day for more than 10 minutes, but fact-finding mission did not see any signs of a gunfight. Nor did the villagers near the site heard any shots being fired,” says the team leader, K Kranti Chaitanya of APCLC.

The fact-finding mission has alleged that the police did not give a copy of the postmortem report of Yellappa when they requested for it. The mission has also alleged that there was no attempt from the police to nab the Naxalites, if any, alive. The mission has also put down four demands, one of which is that murder case under Section 302 of the IPC be registered against the combing party of the Anti-Naxal Force. The other demands are: order a judicial inquiry into the encounter by a sitting judge of the high court, the ANF team should be kept under suspension and all combing operations should be stopped.

The deadline given by the state government to the Naxals to surrender ends on Sunday night.

“We will review the situation on Monday morning if they do not surrender, but the one-week deadline to surrender will end on Sunday evening,” ANF IGP Alok Kumar told DNA.