JOIN USControversy over the Bijapur encounter has heightened further with the Chhattisgarh Congress committee’s fact-finding team claiming that there was no evidence to suggest the 19 killed were Maoists.
The committee also said one of the deceased, being branded as Maoist by the security forces, was just a petty criminal.
The fact finding team also claimed that there was no exchange of fire between the security forces and alleged Maoists at the spot on the intervening night of June 28-29.
“None of the 19 persons killed in the gunfire was Maoists. Some of them were Maoist sympathisers. It was only a friendly fire by the security forces at the spot that injured the security personnel in the incident,” a congress leader privy to the preliminary findings of the party’s fact-finding team said, contradicting Home Minister P Chidambaram’s claim that at least three of them were Maoists.
Markhan Suresh, who was killed in the encounter, is being “branded” by the state police as Maoist and the mastermind of Dantewara jail break incident that took place in 2007, while he was just a petty criminal who had escaped from the prison then and were staying in the village for last four years.
“After the Dantewara jail break, police in the state had claimed that one Sujeet Mandvi of the banned CPI (Maoist) had planned the incident. Now they are saying he was the mastermind,” the congress leader said. Moreover, Naxalites are not allowed to marry, but Suresh was married and had two children, he alleged.
“He (Suresh) was just a criminal who had escaped from the prison during Dantewara jail break incident and was living in the village unnoticed. He was not a Maoist. It was the wrong intelligence information collected by the state police about Suresh that led to the botched up operation in Bijapur,” he added. Party general secretary and in-charge of Chhattisgarh BK Hariprasad said innocent tribals were being sandwiched between security forces and Naxalites in Chhattisgarh.
“It’s a very sensitive issue. State and central governments must ensure security of tribals in the state. Whenever an encounter takes place in Chhattisgarh, the victims are mostly poor tribals. This should not happen. This is injustice,” he said.