ALL INDIA PEOPLE'S RESISTANCE
FORUM (AIPRF)
Statement on the brutal killings
of three Central Committee members of CPI
(ML) [Peoples War]
Dear friends,
The following is a statement on the brutal killings
of three Central Committee members of CPI (ML) [Peoples War], who were
assassinated by the state on 1st December '99 and declared on 2nd December
1999 as being killed in an armed encounter in the forest area of Karimnagar
district in Andhra Pradesh.
Please go through the statement and circulate
it as widely as possible. Please condemn the brutal killings of the peoples'
leaders and organise protests, signature campaigns, dharnas in every possible
way. Also send your protest to the government of India and the government
of Andhra Pradesh.
Yours in struggle,
G.N. Saibaba
General Secretary, AIPRF.
Demand for Immediate Judicial Inquiry
Some Facts About The Karimnagar Encounter
With the killing of Comrades Nalla Adi Reddy (Shyam),
Arramreddy SantoshReddy (Mahesh), Seelam Naresh (Murali), in a fake encounter
supposedly in Koyyur forest of Karimnagar district, Indian People’s revolutionary
movement has lost finest of its sons.
The three comrades, along with Comrade Arun, a
Squad member, were arrested in Bangalore on
December 1 and were killed after brutal torture.
The four dead bodies were thrown near Koyyur to concoct an "Encounter"
story. The state police have also supplied a couple of weapons and other
paraphernalia to show that it was a real "encounter".
However, the police story evidently demonstrates
its highhandedness in a number of ways: If It were a real encounter between
18 police personnel and 30 Naxalites as the police officials want the world
to believe, it would have been impossible for the police to escape unscathed,
inflicting such a huge loss on the revolutionary camp. Unless the police
arrested on a specific information and killed the comrades in cold blood,
it would be impossible to get the comrades at that level at one place.
The killing is one of the biggest losses faced
by the Marxist-Leninist people’s movement in India. The three martyred
comrades were Central Committee members of the Communist Party of India
(Marxist-Leninist) [Peoples War], while Comrade Santosh Reddy was the secretary
of Andhra
Pradesh Provincial Committee and Comrade Naresh
was the secretary of North Telangana Special Zone Provincial Committee.
Comrade Nalla Adi Reddy (48), a very respected
and beloved leader of the people's movement in Telangana for over 25 years,
was born into a middle class agricultural family in Kothagattu village
of Karimnagar district. He was attracted towards the revolutionary politics
during his college days in early 1970s when the "spring thunder of Naxalbari"
was reverberating in this part of the country.
He joined the movement in 1974 and carried out
the responsibilities at various levels of division, district, regional
and provincial committees. He was one of those who laid the foundations
for the peasant movement in Karimnagar-Adilabad districts during the dark
days of Emergency. He was
behind the famous Jagityala Jaitrayatra, which
corrected the adventurist deviations of the Naxalbari line and set it on
the real mass line. In fact, the peasant struggles of Karimnagar-Adilabad
have blazed the path of the revolutionary movement of today.
Comrade Adi Reddy became a member of the AP Provincial
Committee in 1980 and became the PC Secretary in 1984. Thus he was at the
helm when the movement had seen its upsurge. He, along with some other
comrades, was arrested in Hyderabad in May 1986 and was implicated in the
infamous Ramnagar Conspiracy Case. He escaped from Asifabad sub-jail in
Adilabad district when he was taken for a court case there in September
1988. He was in the Central Committee of Peoples War since the early 1990s
and was handling the movement in Andhra Pradesh.
Comrade Santosh Reddy (40) hails from the historic
village of Kadavendi, the birth place of the great martyr Doddi Komaraiah,
whose blood paved the way for the heroic Telangana Peasant Armed Struggle
(1946-51). Comrade Santosh Reddy started his political life as a student
leader in the hotbed of radical student’s movement, Warangal where he had
his undergraduate education. Later he had done two post graduate degrees
from Osmania University in Technology and Philosophy. He earned the love
and affection of a cross section of students, teaching and non-teaching
staff of the university. Going underground after being implicated in the
famous Comrade KS escape case in 1984, Comrade Santosh Reddy went to Khammam
district and
built student, youth and peasant movements there.
He was arrested in 1986 and tried under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities
(prevention) Act and was convicted for five years. Released in 1991, he
once again earnestly joined the movement and became the secretary of the
AP Provincial Committee during mid-1990s.
Comrade Naresh (41), coming from a middle class
family in Jagityal of Karimnagar district, was attracted towards revolutionary
politics when he was doing his course in Electrician at polytechnic in
Sircilla. Worked at various levels from the grassroots to the PC, Comrade
Naresh was known as a very militant leader and a strategist. He built the
peasant movements in Karimnagar and Nizamabad districts before becoming
a member of NTSZPC and its secretary in 1997.
Along with creating the fictitious story of "encounter"
the police top brass of Andhra Pradesh and their political bosses have
started spreading another slander campaign against the movement.
The Director General of Police of the state himself
said that there were differences in the top leadership of the party and
the rift could have elevated Comrade Adi Reddy to the CC secretary position
overthrowing Comrade Ganapathi from that position. Nothing could be more
ridiculous than this theory which is born out of a typical and cynical
ruling class experience.
The police story was evidently faulty and if one
wants to believe the story, as put out by the DGP and religiously reproduced
by the mainstream media, the state DGP was not aware of what was happening
under his very nose. While the so-called encounter started at 6.00 is on
Wednesday, the DGP said, he came to know that there were some dead bodies
lying in the Koyyur forest around noon.
One wonders how the so-called techno-savvy state
government gets such an important information, with so much delay! He also
said that the district SP could identify two dead bodies and since they
were important leaders he immediately flew there in helicopter and identified
the third dead body then. The local papers also carried that the local
police did not have any clue on what was happening. It was also reported
that the villagers did not hear any sound of gunfire during the forenoon,
when the "encounter" was supposed to have taken place.
If one puts together all these bits and pieces
of information and disinformation, the emerging picture tells that the
dead bodies were brought from outside and dumped there. According to reliable
information, Comrade Santosh Reddy reached Bangalore on Wednesday morning
and Comrade Naresh was in some other area till November29. Thus, the circumstantial
evidence tells that all the three were about to meet in Bangalore and somebody
who knows this might have tipped the police.
In fact, one paper has also reported that a Special
Intelligence Bureau officer from Karimnagar has been staying in Bangalore
for a month now. In fact, arresting top leaders in a city or town away
from their work place, killing them and dumping their bodies in their own
areas is not a new practice for AP police.
In 1993, they arrested Comrade Puli Anjaiah (Sagar),
the then secretary of AP PC and his wife, Comrade Bhagya in Bangalore,
killed them there and dumped their bodies in a remote village in Warangal
district. These brutal killing of the top leaders of the revolutionary
movement is part of
intensified counter-revolutionary operations
under the close guidance of the World Bank officials who have been controlling
the Government Andhra Pradesh.
Even the post-killing behaviour of the police
lends weight to the apprehension that it was a fake encounter. While the
encounter news started to spread by the evening of Thursday, the police
announced a "Red Alert" in the state and started searching all vehicles.
The friends of the comrades
and representatives of various mass organizations
were stopped on the outskirts of Karimnagar to prevent them from going
to Peddapalli where post mortem was being conducted. (In fact, the previous
evening DGP told the press that it would be conducted in another town,
just to hoodwink them). Simultaneously, the family of Comrade Santosh Reddy
and several mass organisations were suspecting foul play in post mortem
and were asking for are-post mortem.
This demand also has a history behind it. The
local hospital would not have proper facilities for forensic examination
and more often than not proper professionals would be available. Moreover,
the local level doctors could be easily threatened by the police to get
favorable postmortem reports. In the past, there were significant differences
in the first post-mortem reports conducted at local levels and re-post
mortem reports at Hyderabad.
Thus, Comrade Santosh Reddy's mother approached
High Court to direct the police to send the dead bodies to Hyderabad for
a re-examination. Getting hint of this appeal, the police shown great hurry
in doing postmortem at Peddapalli and prevented the delegation to reach
the town before that.
The dead bodies of Comrade Adi Reddy and Comrade
Naresh were given away to their families, with a warning to dispose them
off soon. Only after the dead bodies were taken away the delegation was
allowed into the town.
On the other hand, the public prosecutor informed
the court that two dead bodies were already handed over and the court can
go ahead with the directive for the other two bodies! When the delegation
wanted to go to Kothagattu to attend the funeral of Comrade Adi Reddy,
the delegation, which included Varavara Rao, Vimala (revolutionary writers),
N V Krishnaiah
(former MLA) and J V Chalapati Rao (leader of
a CPI ML group), was taken into custody. Later in the day, the police department
press release in Hyderabad says, "Varavara Rao was politicising the encounter.
He was obstructing Santosh Reddy's mother from taking her son's body. He
instigated her to file a case against police. So the police have taken
him into custody as a preventive measure"!!
AIPRF demands:
1. A judicial inquiry should be ordered with sitting
Supreme Court Judges to bring out facts of these killings and the responsible
police officers be punished accordingly.
2. The Director General of Police of Andhra Pradesh
should be dismissed with an immediate effect.
3. The revolutionary movement in Andhra Pradesh,
Bihar and other places should be recognised as a socio-economic and political
movement of the deprived sections of people. The leaders and activists
of this movement should be treated accordingly.
4. Stop encounter killings and withdraw armed
forces from all the areas of people's movement.
5. The Co-ordination Centre (formed with top officials
of Central Home Ministry and the top police officials of Andhra Pradesh,
Bihar, Maharastra, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa) to carry out these covert
and overt operations of state repression should be dismantled.
G.N. Saibaba
General Secretary, AIPRF
PD-50A, Vishakha Enclave
Pitampura, Delhi-34
Phone: 011-7466155 (Fax also)
Email: aiprf@bol.net.in
or aiprf@hotmail.com
To
His Excellency Mr. K.R. Narayanan
President Rashtrapati Bhavan New Delhi
Send the protests to the president of India at
following e-mail address:
presssecy@sansad.nic.in
To The President of India and All Responsible
Citizens
We, the undersigned, hereby declare that we have
found ample circumstantialevidence to believe that the encounter killings
that took place in Karimnagar district in Andhra Pradesh on 2 December
99 was a fake-encounter and a brutal political assassination of the three
Central Committee members of CPI (ML) [Peoples War] and another member
of the same Party. The leaders of the CPI (ML) [Peoples War] were picked
up from somewhere and killed in cold blood before announcing the "fierce
armed encounter" with the police in Koyyur forest of Karimnagar district
of Andhra Pradesh. Among others evidences, the following circumstantial
points of evidence show clearly that the incident is a fake encounter.
a) It cannot be true that no one of the Police
personnel were injured in the ‘fierce armed’ battle or any other on the
side of CPI (ML) [Peoples War], except for these four top leaders, who
were killed.
b) The supposed plenum, the secret venue on which
the police supposedly attacked, could take place hardly one kilometer away
from the main road.
c) The nearby villagers could not hear the sounds
of firing, though the supposed encounter took place for several hours.
d) The way the police officials have been forcing
the family members to burn the dead bodies to erase the evidence.
We demand:
1. A judicial inquiry should be ordered with
sitting Supreme Court Judges to bring out facts of these killings and the
responsible police officers be punished accordingly.
2. The Director General of Police of Andhra Pradesh
should be dismissed with an immediate effect.
3. The revolutionary movement in Andhra Pradesh,
Bihar and other places should be recognised as a socio-economic and political
movement of the deprived sections of people. The leaders and activists
of this movement should be treated accordingly.
4. Stop encounter killings and withdraw armed
forces from all the areas of peoples movement.
5. The Co-ordination Centre (formed with top officials
of Central Home Ministry and the top police officials of Andhra Pradesh,
Bihar, Maharastra, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa) to carry out these covert
and overt operations of state repression should be dismantled.
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