Seven members from the Central Committee of the banned CPI (Maoist), who are lodged in Visakhapatnam Central Jail and Cherlapally Central Jail as undertrial prisoners, will observe one-day fast on Wednesday, protesting the alleged extra-judicial killing of five undertrial prisoners by the Telangana police and 20 labourers from Tamil Nadu in Seshachalam forest by the AP Police.
Addressing the media persons here on Monday, civil rights activist and member of Virasam Varavara Rao said CC member Varanasi Subrahmanyam, N. Ravi Sharma and Purnendu Mukherjee, who are lodged in Visakhapatnam jail, and Akhilesh Yadav, Bacha Prasad Singh, Amit Bagchi and Vijay Kumar Arya, who are in Cherlapally jail, have decided to take up the protest. Mr. Varavara Rao termed both the shootings as brazen extra-judicial cold-blooded murder.
In the case of Vikaruddin and four of his accomplices, who were alleged to be SIMI activists and were shot dead by the Telangana police while being shifted from Warangal to Hyderabad near Nalgonda, Mr. Varavara Rao said, “all the five were undertrial prisoners and all such prisoners are under the protection of the court. It was the gross failure of the judiciary to protect them and it was a clear case of revenge killing.”He further said the circumstantial evidences in both the cases clearly indicate that the killings were fake and staged.
The civil rights activist also demanded that the High Court should intervene and suspend all the police officials involved in both the cases and book them for culpable homicide.
