The Special Investigation Team constituted by the Andhra Pradesh Government to probe the killing of 20 woodcutters from Tamil Nadu in Seshachalam reserve forests on April 7, 2015, began examining of witnesses in the case here on Tuesday.
The SIT, led by its Deputy Inspector General of Police B.V. Ramana Kumar, started their probe with the questioning of Henry Tiphagne, executive director of People’s Watch, a Madurai-based NGO, at its office in Chinna Chokkikulam.
The SIT had issued summons to Mr. Tiphagne and three other persons — P. Paramatha Sekar (50), M. Ilangovan (22) (both from Tiruvannamalai district) and H. Balachandran (30) of Dharmapuri district.
The trio, who feared threat to their lives following the killing, were under the NGO’s custody.
The team that was slated to arrive at the People’s Watch office at 11 a.m. on Tuesday turned up only at 3.40 p.m. The Revenue Divisional Officer (Madurai), Senthil Kumari, accompanied the team members numbering over 10.
Mr. Tiphagne said that the actual questioning was delayed for more than an hour as the DIG did not permit the lawyers of the witnesses to be with them during the enquiry. “The DIG claimed that the High Court of Andhra Pradesh had not allowed such a provision. However, we stuck to our stand and later the officials relented,” he said.
Mr. Tiphagne said that he had shared all the information he had about the incident from April 7 and till date, including the protection given to the three witnesses.
The trio had claimed that they were travelling in the same van in which the woodcutters had been forcibly taken away by the AP police some 45 km away from Seshachalam Reserve forest. “There was some six hours gap between the incident and the actual killing of the woodcutters in the alleged encounter,” Mr. Tiphagne said.
He also handed over the list of mobile phone numbers of the deceased to the SIT for them to collect the call detail records to find out their location before the reported encounter. Earlier, Mr. Tiphagne alleged that there was undue delay in the SIT getting the post-mortem reports of the deceased persons.
When asked about the post-mortem reports, the DIG said that he was not supposed to reveal details about the investigation as per the AP High Court order. The enquiry with the other three witnesses will continue on Wednesday.
