In report submitted to court, CBI says Azad killing was not a fake encounter

The Central Bureau of Investigation told the Supreme Court on Friday that the killings of Cherukuri Rajkumar alias Azad, spokesperson of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), and journalist Hemchandra Pandey by the Andhra Pradesh police on the night of July 1, 2010 were not a fake encounter as alleged in the petitions filed in the court.

The CBI made the submission in its final investigation report filed before a Bench of Justices Aftab Alam and Ranjana Desai.

After going through the report, Justice Alam told counsel Prashant Bhushan: “The CBI has done a thorough and painful investigation, which do not confirm your suspicion [of a fake encounter]. We will not sit in [on] appeal over the final investigation report.”

Additional Solicitor-General Harin Raval opposed giving a copy of the report to the petitioners, arguing that it would affect the trial. Senior counsel Altaf Ahmed, appearing for Andhra Pradesh, also took a similar line.

But Mr. Bhushan said that right from the beginning, Home Minister P. Chidambaram was saying that it was not a fake encounter, and the investigation seemed to have supported his statement. If it was a genuine encounter and no offence was committed, why the CBI should oppose giving a copy of the report to the petitioners, he asked.

Justice Alam told Mr. Bhushan that the CBI had conducted a thorough probe and arranged all the events sequentially. When Mr. Bhushan insisted on a copy of the report, the Bench said he would be permitted to inspect it in the Registry. The Bench listed the matter for further hearing on April 13.

In April 2011, the court ordered a CBI probe into the killings and asked the agency to submit a report.

According to the petitioners, the post-mortem reports and a fact-finding work carried out by the Coordination of Democratic Rights Organisations indicated that it was not a genuine encounter, and that Azad and Pandey were killed in blatant violation of their rights under Articles 14 and 21. Azad was carrying a letter from Swami Agnivesh for peace talks when he, along with Pandey, was taken into custody.