While the victims on the one hand have been waiting for over 11 years for a judgment, the accused policemen on the other have been experiencing a testing time.
The accused not only plead innocence, a number of senior police officers and members of the Police Officers’ Association, allege the personnel have been falsely implicated and the whole episode was scripted and orchestrated by Maoists.
Firstly, according to the police, the accused were not from the Greyhounds. They were from the AP Special Police and are called special parties who take up extensive combing operations in the Maoist-affected areas in the Visakha Agency.
Combing operation
Senior officers say that the 21-odd-strong party was on a combing operation with some specific inputs of some senior Maoist leaders, including Bakuri Venkata Ramana alias Ganesh, a special zonal committee member, hiding close to the village. (Ganesh was one among the 30 Maoists killed in the Ramaguda exchange of fire in October 2016).
The residents were fully aware of the presence of the senior Maoist leaders and it was the Maoists who had instructed the villagers to stage a ruckus, so that the troops cannot advance further. They even tried to assault the policemen with sticks and stones and later staged a show by throwing their own utensils outside keeping broken bangles in the field, claimed a senior police officer.
A few officers pointed out that Vakapalli, being a secluded village in the interior parts of the Sgency, had always been a safe place for Maoists.
Pangi Suryam, husband of one of the victims, was allegedly an active member of the Korukonda dalam of the CPI (Maoist) and was one among the key accused in the murder of M. Venkata Raju, husband of the then Andhra Pradesh Minister for Tribal Welfare, M. Manikumari, who was killed by a Maoist action squad in March 2004. The charges against Suryam were dropped after he surrendered, said a senior police officer.
Similarly, Gemilli Daniel, a Maoist who was also killed in the Ramaguda exchange of fire, also hailed from the village. He was also the child witness in the Vakapalli rape case.
