On the morning of January 6, Bhima Nupo (40), a tribal of Rewali village in Dantewada district of South Chhattisgarh, set out to collect firewood with his wife Budhari.
By afternoon, Rewali villagers received news that Bhima, a father of five kids, was shot dead near Malangir stream, hardly a few metres from the village.
Police registered a case against “unknown, uniformed and armed Maoists” for killing Bhima on suspicion that he was a police informer.
However, villagers of Rewali, Bhima’s wife Budhari and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Soni Sori have alleged that Bhima was shot dead in “cold blood” by the police.
“There was firing from the police side on January 6 morning near the stream. Bhima was shot twice,” claimed Rakesh Tati, the sarpanch (village headman) of Rewali.
Although, Rewali falls under the jurisdiction of the Aranapur police station, villagers took Bhima’s body to the Nakulnar police station and registered an FIR.
“We had gone near the stream to cut small trees. Bhima decided to bathe in the stream. Police shot him from the other side of the stream. I was scared and watched my husband getting killed from behind a tree,” claimed Budhari Nupo.
“They filled a wrong FIR against Maoists. Bhima was hit by two bullets, one of which is still at the spot. The Maoists usually slit the throats of their individual targets or shoot from a close range but in this case it’s clear that Bhima was fired at from a long distance, probably from the other side of the stream,” said another villager requesting anonymity.
Asked about the villagers’ and Budhari’s allegations, inspector Sharad Chandra of Nakulnar police station said, “The allegations against the police are baseless. We registered the FIR as dictated by the villagers and the wife of the deceased. They were speaking in Gondi language so we had to employ a translator for the task. They [villagers] themselves told us that Maoists killed him.”
Ms. Sori has threatened to gherao the SP office in Dantewada if there is no proper investigation in the case.
“There was not even a proper post-mortem of the victim. So the villagers did not cremate the body but buried it so that in case of re-investigation , there could be another post-mortem,” she said.
‘There was not
even a proper
post-mortem of
the victim’
