The Central Committee of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) has called a two-day nation-wide bandh from December 4 in protest against what it described as “the brutal murder” of the party's Polit Bureau member Koteshwara Rao alias Kishenji in an encounter involving joint security forces in Burisole forest in West Bengal's Paschim Medinipur district on November 24.
A “protest week” will also be observed by the Maoists from November 29 to December 5 in this regard.
CPI(Maoist) Central Committee spokesperson Abhay blamed Congress president and United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Home Minister P. Chidambaram and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for the “murder.”
Meanwhile, Gudsa Usendi, spokesperson of the Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), said it would not be right to jump to any conclusion regarding allegations by a section of the media that Kishenji had been betrayed by his inner circle.
Meanwhile, the preliminary reports of the autopsy conducted in Midnapore on Saturday before the body was handed over to Kishenji's niece Deepika Musthyala, reveal that there were six bullet injuries on his body and at least two shrapnel wounds.
“We have not yet received the autopsy report and so cannot comment on it,” said Gangeshwar Singh, Inspector-General of Police (Western Range).
“He was tortured”
Revolutionary poet and Maoist ideologue Varavara Rao insisted that Kishenji had been picked up a day or two before the “encounter,” was tortured and then shot.
Mr. Rao, who had seen the body in the mortuary at Midnapore Medical College and Hospital on Saturday, claimed that “the feet had been burnt… as if they had been held against an electric heater.”
