The Principal District and Sessions Court, Manjeri, has restrained the police from disposing of the bodies of the two Maoists slain in an alleged encounter in the Nilambur forests on Thursday last.
Principal District Judge S.S. Vasan ordered on Monday that the police should not dispose of the bodies of Kuppu Devarajan and Ajita alias Kaveri until 7 p.m. on Tuesday.
Hearing an interim application filed by Devarajan’s brother Sreedharan, the court ordered that “the bodies of Kuppu Devarajan and Kaveri Ajita shall not be buried or destroyed otherwise, and shall be preserved till 7 p.m. on Tuesday, awaiting further orders from this court”.
The court will continue the hearing in the application on Tuesday.
Lawyers Tushar Nirmal Saradhi and P.A. Pouran moved the application on behalf of Mr. Sreedharan, claiming that the killing was in a fake encounter by the police and that the bodies should be preserved and re-examined in detail with experts from outside the State.
Devarajan’s brother moved the court as the police had indicated that the bodies would be disposed of by Monday evening.
The applicants also sought copies of the inquest report and the post-mortem examination report. The court accepted the oral assurance of the police that they would provide the inquest and post-mortem examination report copies to the applicant.
Many human rights activists from across the country have offered support to the relatives of Kuppu Devarajan, a central committee member of the CPI(Maoist), who, according to the police, carried a bounty of Rs. 1.12 crore on his head, to prove their claim that Devarajan and Kaveri had been killed in a fake encounter.
