The Human Rights Forum (HRF) on Friday demanded that personnel of the Special Operations Group (SOG) and District Voluntary Force (DVF), who participated in the alleged encounter of five Maoists near Kituba village of Badel panchayat in Nandapur block, Koraput district of Odisha on May 8, be booked for murder under IPC Section 302 and other relevant provisions of the penal code and criminally prosecuted.
A three-member HRF fact-finding team visited Kituba village on Thursday and spoke with residents in the area. “We were able to ascertain that there is no truth in the official version that a combined team of the SOG and DVF came upon the Maoists in the Badel forests upon which the Maoists initially opened fire and the security forces returned the fire in self-defence leading to the death of five Maoists,” said Mr. V.S. Krishna, HRF AP&TS Coordination Committee member.
‘No exchange of fire’
According to HRF’s findings, on May 8 there was a Maoist squad which was present in a fairly thick grove adjacent to Kituba and they had asked the villagers for food. “At about 1 p.m., Kituba villagers had taken food to the grove but before the Maoists could eat it, the SOG and DVF numbering over 20 descended on the area and opened fire straightaway killing the five Maoists,” he pointed out. “There was no exchange of fire for about an hour as claimed by the police, nor was any warning given to the Maoists to surrender. The firing was unilateral and intended to kill,” observed Mr. Krishna.
He said that it was unfair for the police to state that their men retaliated in self-defence and the five Maoists were killed in the subsequent exchange of fire.“The police simply cannot file closure reports without judicial scrutiny and for that to happen FIRs under appropriate sections of the penal law have to be filed against police personnel who took part in the alleged encounter. Also, for justice to be done, the criminal investigation into the case must not be done by the Odisha police but must be handed over to either the CBI or a criminal investigation team as independent of the State police as possible,” said K. Sudha, HRF AP State general secretary.
