Bhubaneswar/Bijapur: Three days after the police claimed to have killed 12 Naxalites during an encounter in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur district, locals and activists have alleged that the exchange of fire was fake and those killed were not Maoists. The police Friday had claimed that they had neutralised 12 Naxalites in a forest near Pidia village under Gangaloor police station limits in an encounter during an anti-Naxalite operation. Police also identified the dead Naxalites and claimed that they all carried cash rewards.
Local villagers, mostly women, and family members of the deceased who had been camping in Bijapur district headquarters since Saturday accused the police of staging a fake encounter.
The protesting women claimed that police gunned down residents of Pidia and nearby Itawar village when they had gone to pluck kendu leaves, a source of livelihood for many in the region. A woman, who identified herself as Avlam Budri, said her husband was picked up by the police when he had gone to pluck kendu leaves Friday and she is unaware whether he is alive.
Tribal activist Soni Sori, who was accompanying them, said Friday’s encounter was fake and police opened fire on people from Pidia and Itawar villages out in the forest to pluck kendu leaves. Echoing similar claims, Rakesh Avlam told some local media persons in his Pidia village that police chased villagers who were plucking kendu leaves and gunned them down. Avlam, who is associated with kendu leaf collection work, claimed his cousin brother Motu Avlam who was also collecting the leaves suffered bullet injuries in police firing.
According to reports in a leading national daily, Gurunanda, a resident of Pedia village who witnessed the encounter, said that some villagers had gone to pluck kendu leaves from the forest when the security forces came towards them.
Seeing this, the villagers started running away. “They were shot down by the forces while they were running in fear and surprise,” he said, according to the newspaper. DIG (Dantewada region-South Bastar) Kamlochan Kashyap refuted the claims, asserting that those killed in the encounter were Maoists and carrying cash rewards. Former Chhattisgarh CM Bhupesh Baghel of Congress said that unexpected political pressure on security forces should not be such that their actions are questioned.