JOIN USHyderabad encounter killings: ‘We want probe by CBI or NIA’
“Even the man involved in killing of Rajiv Gandhi has now been released after three decades, following due procedure of law. But my son was shot dead by the police within just 10 days after a crime he was accused of committing,” Jollu Rajaiah’s voice trembles with anguish, as he refers to the recent release of A G Perarivalan, who was convicted of being involved in the May 21, 1991 assassination of the former prime minister at Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu.
Rajaiah’s son, Jollu Shiva, was one of the four, who were arrested for allegedly raping and murdering a 26-year-old veterinary doctor on the outskirts of Hyderabad on November 27, 2019. He and the three others were killed in a police encounter just nine days later.
The Commission of Inquiry set up by the Supreme Court to probe the incident has concluded that the ‘encounter’ was fake. The panel, which was headed by Justice (retd) V S Sirpurkar, also found that Rajaiah’s son Shiva and two of the three others killed in the ‘encounter’ were minor at the time of the crime they were accused to have committed.
“We are poor and illiterate and that is why the police, the system, could easily resort to lawless execution of our boys,” Rajaiah, who makes a living out of one acre farmland and occasional wage labour in a small village of Narayanpet district in south Telangana, tells DH. “Even if our children had committed a crime, there was a system to punish them. We could have had a chance of having them back after 10-15 years (of prison)”.
The gruesome crime Shiva, Chintakunta Chennakeshavulu, Jollu Naveen and Mohammed Arif were accused of committing sparked a nationwide outrage and the policemen, who arrested them and killed them in an encounter received accolades from across the country.
But the commission headed by Justice Sirpurkar is not convinced by the claim of Telangana Police that the four accused tried to flee after throwing dust in their eyes and snatching arms and that they also fired at the cops. The panel has recommended that the 10 policemen, who accompanied the accused to the scene of offence on December 6, 2019, should be tried for deliberately firing upon them with an intent to cause death.
Rajaiah believes that his son was either innocent or the whole truth in the rape-murder case could not come out. So do the families of the three others.
The families of the four deceased accused no longer have faith on the Telangana Police. “We would ask the court to handover the murder probe to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) or the National Investigation Agency (NIA),” P V Krishnamachary, the lawyer representing the four families, told DH.
The High Court of Telangana is expected to take up the case against the 10 policemen in the first week of June, after the summer vacation.
“In the days following the rape-murder, the police and the K Chandrasekhar Rao government was under tremendous pressure to act, facing immense public ire. And, in order to cover up their failure in promptly registering a missing FIR and conducting search for the woman, the Cyberabad Police, we believe, went for the extra-judicial killings,” said Krishnamachary.
Soon after the four had been arrested on November 29, 2019, a crowd of around 50,000 people had tried to lay siege to the Shadnagar Police Station, where they had been lodged.
“People were provoked as the police only blamed our kids,” says Rajaiah.
The four were taken to the scene of the offence early on December 6, 2019 to recover the rape-murder victim’s phone and other items that they had allegedly disposed off after committing the crime. The police later said that they had tried to snatch the weapons of the accompanying police personnel, who then had to shoot them down in an encounter. A large number of people gathered at the scene of the encounter and showered rose petals on the cops. Cyberabad Police Commissioner V C Sajjanar and his team were lauded for delivering instant justice.