Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam general secretary Vaiko has alleged that some ruling partymen were involved in threatening the three witnesses in the incident of Andhra Pradesh police gunning down 20 woodcutters from Tamil Nadu. The witnesses were under pressure to turn hostile in the case, he said.
Talking to reporters here on Monday, he said the State government had not extended protection to these three witnesses – Balachandran, Sekar and Elangovan – whose lives were at peril.
While one of them was a witness in the bus from where the Andhra Pradesh police allegedly took the woodcutters, another was a witness to their torture. The latter had escaped from the Seshachalam reserve forest area, where the victims were shot dead, alleged Mr. Vaiko.
Political parties have been demanding a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation into the “fake encounter” as recommended by the National Human Rights Commission and also wanted the Tamil Nadu government to implead itself in the case. Not only were the post-mortem reports of all the 20 persons were yet to be made public, but also the reports of the re-post-mortem done on six bodies in Tamil Nadu were not given to the family members, he said.
All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam functionaries in Tiruvannamalai district had also used coercive steps of offering the witnesses huge money to withdraw their statements against the AP police, Mr. Vaiko said.
Charge against police
Alleging that the Tamil Nadu police had forced the relatives of the deceased to cremate the bodies to prevent further investigation, he said that the officials of Tamil Nadu police were hand in glove with their AP counterparts.
Mr. Vaiko said that he would like to meet the Chief Minister, Jayalalithaa, to explain the situation.
