Adilabad District and Sessions Court in Telangana has adjourned delivering the verdict in the case of top Maoist leader Azad alias Rajkumar to January 12 as the judge had proceeded on Christmas holiday.
Azad, central committee member of the outlawed CPI (Maoist) party along with a Delhi-based journalist Hemchandar Pandey was killed in an alleged encounter with police in Adilabad forest on 1 July, 2010. While police claimed that the duo were Naxalites and died in an exchange of fire, Azad’s wife Padma field a case of murder and took the matter to the court.
Over the last four years, the court completed the hearing of the arguments of both the sides and reserved the judgment. The families of Azad and journalist Hemchandar Pandey along with the human rights activists alleged that the duo was picked up by the police from a train at Nagpur and brought to Adilabad where they were killed in cold blood in a fake encounter.
The police denied the allegation. Meanwhile, in a related development, another senior Maoist from Telangana Bandi Ramesh surrendered to the police in Warangal district. Ramesh alias Saleem, who carried a reward of `4 lakh on his head was involved in several cases including an exchange of fire in Sukma district of Chhattisgarh in 2013 and served in many positions in the CPI (Maoist). He was also facing a murder charge.
“I decided to give up as the party has lost the support of the people and the internal squabbling has affected the spirits of the cadre”, Saleem said. The party suffered the setback at a time when it was trying to regroup itself in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh and recover the lost ground.