Fact-finding team for Azad killing to release probe details Read more: ‘Fact-finding team’ for Azad killing to release probe details

NAGPUR: A ‘fact-finding team,’ formed by democratic rights and civil liberties organizations to probe into the alleged fake encounter of Naxal leader and party spokesperson Azad and journalist Hem Chandra Pandey on July 1, is set to release their findings before the media at Hyderabad on Sunday.

The team, which began its probe on Saturday in Adilabad, was sent on the behalf 24 organizations espousing the cause of democratic rights and civil liberties. The probe members already visited the villages close to the Wankedi jungle where Azad and his journalist friend were gunned down. The controversy flared up recently when railway minister Mamta Banerjee cornered the security agencies by supporting the claim of Naxals and pro-Maoist organizations that Azad was ‘murdered.’

“The autopsy report (of Azad) suggested that the entry and exit wounds were narrow in diameter, indicating that bullets were fired from close range. In case of a real encounter, the diameter of bullet wounds and exit points would be different, establishing the fact that the encounter was fake,” said activist Kranti Chetan, general secretary of Andhra Pradesh civil liberties committee.

The allegations of pro-Naxal front organizations were that Azad and Pandey were picked up by Andhra Pradesh-based security and intelligence agencies from Nagpur railway station on July 1. They were later taken to Adilabad and gunned down. The activists had rubbished outright the claim of security agencies that Azad and Pandey were intercepted while crossing over to Adilabad from Maharashtra and killed after an exchange of fire.

Naba Dutta: More Than Just An Arrest

By Nagarik Mancha

21 August, 2010
Sanhati

On 17th August 2010, social activist and our General Secretary, Naba Dutta, had been arrested from West Medinipur. Owing to unprecedented public outcry against the arrest, he was granted bail next day, but not before serious, and totally fabricated, criminal charges were brought against him.

Why and how did this happen? Let us look at the context of this incident:

FACTS

1. Mr Naba Dutta, General Secretary of Nagarik Mancha, along with Ms Prajnaparamita Dutta Raychaudhuri, Mr Dipankar Majumdar and Mr Gautam Ghosh, all associated with our organization, had travelled to the Narayangarh BDO Office (155 km from Kolkata) in Belda Subdivision of West Medinipur, West Bengal on Tuesday, 17 August 2010.

2. This team from Nagarik Mancha went there in solidarity with a hunger strike and a sit-in demonstration programme organized in front of the said BDO Office by the ‘Paschim Medinipur Lodha Shabar Kalyan Samiti’ (Lodhas and the Sabars are adivasis). This organization was agitating with a 14-point charter of demand which included a demand for rebuilding 11 hutments burnt down by politically motivated miscreants. Announcement about the demonstration had been made in a Press Conference at Medinipur Town on 12 August 2010 including the news about Naba Dutta’s forthcoming visit.

3. Naba Dutta and others including Joydeb Singh (an activist with Paschim Medinipur Lodha Shabar Kalyan Samiti) headed towards Kolkata in their rented car (WB-02M-8565) just after 5pm. About 5 km from the venue a police car (WB-34N-0011) approached them and a plain clothed personnel (later identified as the OC, Belda PS) informed them that they were to follow the police car to Narayangarh PS.

I told them I was not a Maoist: Anti-Vedanta leader Lada Sikaka Majhi

Both the SPs of Rayagada and Kalahandi deny that anti-Vedanta activist Lada Sikaka Majhi (35) was tortured in custody. But the deep injury marks on Majhi’s body have something else to say. Majhi is associated with the Niyamgiri Surakshya Parishad, which is opposing the Vedanta Group’s proposed mining lease in Niyamgiri hills, spread over Kalahandi and Rayagada districts, both about 550 km south-west of Bhubaneswar.

It is meant to be a captive unit of the group’s R8,400-crore, 500,000-tonne aluminium plant in Orissa.

On August 9, Majhi was on his way to Raipur in Chhattisgarh in a vehicle, along with two other anti-mining activists, to board a train to New Delhi. They were to attend a meeting on the Forest Rights Act.

As their vehicle was passing through the Niyamgiri forest, more than 12 armed men with AK-47 rifles stopped their car, snatched the car key and a mobile phone, and dragged out Majhi, his companion Sana Majhi and a woman activist. The men packed them into another vehicle and drove towards Rayagada. They threw Sana Majhi and the woman out of the vehicle on the way.

“I could not see where they were taking me because I was blind-folded. After about four hours, my blind-fold was removed and I found myself in a police station,” Majhi said.