Post-mortem indicates Azad was shot from close range

Top Maoist leader Azad, who the Andhra Pradesh police claimed to have killed in an encounter on July 1, was shot from very close range, according to his post-mortem report accessed by Rediff.com’s Krishnakumar Padamanbhan.

Top Maoist leader Azad, alias Cherukuri Rajkumar, who the Andhra Pradesh police claimed to have killed in an encounter in the forests of Adilabad district in Andhra Pradesh, was shot from very close range, probably from less than one foot, according to his post mortem report, accessed by Rediff.com

The post-mortem report stands in contradiction with the police version that Azad was killed in a gun-battle between 11 pm and 11.30 pm on July 1 in Sarkepally village, Wankedi, in Adilabad district.

After the Andhra Pradesh police claimed Azad, a member of the Communist Party of India-Maoist central committee and politburo as well as its national spokesman, was killed in the forests of Adilabad district, the Maoists claimed that he had been picked up in Nagpur a day earlier, flown to Adilabad by helicopter, and executed in cold blood along with a man named Hemchandra Pandey.

In May, Home Minister P Chidambaram [ Images ] had invited Swami Agnivesh, who had led a peace march in Chhattisgarh in April, to mediate with the Maoists and explore the possibility of a cease-fire, which would likely result in peace talks with the central government.

With Chidambaram’s permission, Agnivesh met with senior Maoist leaders Kobad Gandhy in Delhi’s [ Images ] Tihar jail and Narayan Sanyal in Raipur jail in Chhattisgarh to begin the peace process.

He also wrote to the Maoists, informing them about the government’s interest in a dialogue, to bring about a peaceful resolution to the Leftist insurgency that has crippled life in many districts in the country.

Lalgarh: 8 months after ‘arrest’, Raju and Jaydeb produced before Jhargram court

OUR CORRESPONDENT

Raju’s wife Kanika (top) and mother-in-law at their Jirapara home on Friday. (Picture by Samir Mondal)

Midnapore, Aug. 22: West Midnapore police have been accused of arresting two alleged Maoists from Lalgarh and holding on to them for eight months before producing them in a Jhargram court on Friday.

The district police, however, have denied that it was they who arrested Raju Adak and Jaydeb Bera, who had disappeared from Lalgarh in December. Officers claimed the duo were brought to Bengal from Jharkhand police’s custody.

West Midnapore superintendent of police (SP) Manoj Verma said his force learnt a week ago that the two youths, whom they had been looking for, were in a jail in Ghatshila, Jharkhand.

But Kanika and Anjali, the wives of Raju and Jaydeb, claimed that district policemen had dragged both men out of their beds on the night of December 6 and arrested them.

“It was around 1am and we were sleeping. I heard a knock on the door. When I opened the door, I saw armed policemen had surrounded our house. They dragged my husband out of the house. I asked them why they were taking him away but they refused to answer,” Kanika, a resident of Jirapara village, said yesterday.

She said the police then went to her sister Anjali’s home in neighbouring Dharampur. “They picked up her husband (Jaydeb).”

Anjali said the police took Jaydeb away even though he told them he would go to Lalgarh police station the next morning.

Kanika and Anjali went to Lalgarh police station the next morning. “An officer told us the police would release our husbands after interrogation. We came back home but our husbands did not return. When we went to the police station again, officers told us they had not picked up anybody by the name of Raju Adak or Jaydeb Bera,” Anjali said.

The issue of the names had cropped up on Friday itself when the police identified the duo as Prasanta Mandal and Jhantu Das in court. After the defence lawyer protested, the police said the accused had given these false names to the Jharkhand police.