Maoists trying to malign police, says AP top cop

Almost two months after his death, top Maoist leader Cherukuri Rajkumar alias Azad is back to haunt the Andhra Pradesh police. Even as the union railway minister Mamata Bannerji has created a political storm raising questions about the manner of Azad's death, several civil rights organizations have put the police in the dock. Organizations like Virasam, Progressive Women's Organization and Backward classes Mahajan samiti has claimed that the post mortem examination report proves that Azad was killed in a fake encounter.

Virasam leader and poet Vara Vara Rao and several other activists have told the media in Hyderabad that the the post mortem proved that police had fired at Azad from point blank range. The activists alleged that the police had tried its best to change the postmortem examination report but failed.

Kranti Kumar of Andhra Pradesh Electronic Media association reiterated that Hema Chandar Pandey was not a Maoist but a journalist and he was also killed in fake encounter.

"The government issued a notice to Mamta Bannerji for calling Azad's killing a fake encounter. Now that the PME has proved it to be a false encounter, what the government would say", asked U Sambasiva Rao of the Mahajan Samiti.

Vara Vara Rao demanded that all the police officials involved in the incident should be put under suspension, a murder case should be booked against them and judicial probe by a Supreme Court judge be ordered.   

The claims of the activists have evoked a strong reaction from the state police chief RR Girish Kumar who insisted that there was no truth in these allegations. These are false baseless allegations against the police, he said adding that the vested interest at the behest of CPI Maoist were misquoting the contents of the post mortem.  

"I would like to inform the members of the public that the said encounter between police and Maoists is "real and genuine" undoubtedly", he said in a statement issued on Saturday. "There is absolutely nothing in the post mortem report to indicate that the firing was resorted to at point blank range. The activists of frontal organizations have picked up only those words selectively from the Post Mortem Report and FIR which suit to the requirement of their motivated campaign."

Stressing that every thing including PME and the FIR will be subjected to scrutiny by judicial authorities, Girish Kumar said, "the Maoists having lost their most important cadre Azad, whom the Maoists themselves termed him as 'mind & soul' of the party, are unable to digest the loss and started propagating utter falsehood repeatedly through their frontal organizations like APCLC etc.  For motivated reasons, the Maoist outfit has launched a systematic campaign for maligning the state agencies through their frontal organizations to regain lost ground in Andhra Pradesh. This tactic is being resorted to intimidate the law-enforcing agencies and law-abiding citizens, so as to run their writ through the barrel of the gun".