The Kerala CPI(M), which has never hesitated to condemn incidents encounter killings in other parts of the country, and the lDF Government it leads, are in a spot due to their inability to explain the true nature of Thursday’s encounter in the Nilambur forests in Malappuram district in which two Maoists, a 61-year-old man and a 45-year-old woman, were killed by the police’s Thunderbolt commandos.
Amidst mounting protests against the encounter killings, particularly from the CPI, the second biggest lDF constituent, Marxist Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Sunday ordered a magisterial inquiry into the incident and directed the Sub-Collector of Perinthalmanna to submit a report. However, the CPI, the State Congress, several other parties and rights groups are not prepared to accept anything less than a judicial probe.
The police had claimed that the rebels – Kupu Devaraj, a central committee member of the CPI(Maoist), woman Maoist Ajitha, both Tamil Nadu natives – were killed in an encounter and that the rebels had opened fire first. The two were killed when the Thunderbolt team on a routine patrol returned fire, they said. The encounter took place in the jungles of Karulayi, several kilometers away from the Padukka Forest Station in Nilambur on Thursday morning.
Kerala DGP loknath Behera had the other day ordered a probe by the Crime Branch of the State police into the incident as the Supreme Court had in 2014 had laid down guidelines by which mandatory registration of FIR and investigation by the CID or another independent agency was necessary in all cases of encounter deaths. The State Human Rights Commission has demanded a report from the DGP on the incident.
Pinarayi Vijayan had on Friday said that he did not have the details of the incident but on Sunday Marxist Public Works Minister G Sudhakaran told newsmen that the police had taken the decision and the Chief Minister was not aware of it. “Have no doubt… The Government’s stand (on encounters) is the stand of the communist party. We have not done anything. Please trust me on this,” he said.
However, the general suspicion that the Maoists were killed not in an encounter but the police might have shot them in close range in a fake encounter strengthened after parts of the postmortem report appeared in the media, which said Ajitha had been shot 19 times and Devaraj seven times. However, the dress the two left rebels had worn as seen in the pictures released by the police did not have the signs of many bullets or enough bloodstains.
Alleging that the police had killed the duo in order to claim Central fund meant for anti-Maoist operations, State CPI secretary Kanam Rajendran said on Sunday, “You just can’t shoot people to death for Central funds. You can create stories that they are preparing to overthrow the State system. An elected government should not allow itself to be possessed by the specter of the police. Maoists are not a law and order problem but they are a socio-political problem.”
As per reports, the doctors who had conducted the autopsy had extracted five bullets from Ajitha’s dead body while they found marks that suggested that 13 other bullets had passed through it. They were unable to extract one bullet. Four bullets were extracted from Devaraj’s body while three had passed through it. The duo could have been shot at by rapid-fire rifles from close range, forensic experts said.
A young leader of the State CPI(M) admitted that the Chief Minister had the responsibility to offer a “realistic explanation” over the incident at the earliest. “We are not great lovers of Maoists but that doesn’t mean that we support annihilating them through fake encounters. The Marxist party cannot afford to be accused of having the Maoists’ blood on its hands. The picture has to become clear as soon as possible,” he said.