‘Evidence’, a human rights organisation that sent fact-finding teams to probe the circumstances that led to the gunning down of 20 woodcutters of Tamil Nadu in the Seshachalam forest area near Tirupati on April 7, has demanded that the mobile phone numbers of the victims and Special Task Force (STF) personnel be analysed as it would provide vital clues in the case.
Its executive director A. Kathir said a careful analysis of mobile phones of the woodcutters would reveal their location and movements in the last 72 hours of the alleged encounter. “Since one of the eyewitnesses Sekhar of Tiruvannamalai has claimed that he saw police dragging away six woodcutters from a bus a day before the encounter killings in the Tamil Nadu-Andhra Pradesh border, the movement and last location of those six persons would provide crucial evidence,” he said.
Mr. Kathir said since the Andhra Pradesh police had registered a case of kidnap and murder against its own STF men, it would only be fair in the interest of justice to transfer the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation. The Andhra Pradesh government should provide immediate financial assistance to the families of victims. Going by a Government Order issued by the Social Welfare Department of that State, the victims belonging to the Scheduled Tribe communities were entitled to compensation.
People’s Union for Civil Liberties national general secretary V. Suresh said that in the backdrop of the fact that the Andhra Pradesh Government had ruled out the possibility its STF personnel abusing powers to kill woodcutters or their complicity in a crime, entrusting investigation to the State police would not instil confidence. The Supreme Court had often reiterated that “justice should not only be done but it must also seen to be done”.
In the present circumstances, if the same State police force was entrusted with the task of investigating the role of policemen in the encounter killing, the relatives of the victim woodcutters will lose trust in the fairness, independence and neutrality of the criminal justice system itself.
“The option is to transfer the investigation to an independent agency like the CBI,” Dr. Suresh said.
