On Monday, the Kerala Police gunned down three Maoists near Agali in Kerala's Palakkad district.
Thunderbolts, the Kerala Police's specialised anti-terror commando force, killed Karthik, Arvind and Sreemathi in an encounter at the Agali-Ooty road, which runs through the Manjakandi forest.
Since 2016, the police have killed six Maoists in three different encounters in Kerala. They had gunned down Kuppu Devaraj and Ajitha in 2016 in Nilambur in Malappuram district. Three years later, they killed CP Jaleel in Vythiri in Wayanad district. Karthik, Arvind and Sreemathi were the latest victims.
All the three encounters have a few striking similarities.
After the encounters, police would claim that Maoists had fired at them and they did not have any other option but to retaliate. The government would announce crime branch and magisterial inquiries only after human rights activists and relatives raised doubts about the deaths. And the government would not show any interest in publishing the probe reports.
March 6, 2019: CP Jaleel killed
• Maoist leader CP Jaleel was gunned down in Vythiri in Wayanad district.
• After the incident, the police said: “As many as 10 Maoists arrived at a resort in Vythiri on March 6 at 7:30pm. They demanded cash and provision. A resort staff informed the police about the Maoist presence. When the police arrived, Maoists went back to the forest, but they began to shoot at the police. Police fired back and Jaleel died. There were no casualties on the police side. Other Maoists escaped."
• On March 7, the resort manager denied Police claim that Maoists had threatened the staff at the resort.
He reportedly said: "Maoists did not take anyone of us hostage. Police began the firing first. None of the resort staff had called the police for help."
• Following the resort manager's revelation, human rights activists and scholars alleged that the encounter was fake.
They said: "The suspicion that the shocking encounter had been fake gained strength. The statements made by the resort manager from the location of the incident before the television cameras and reports in the media have only helped strengthen these doubts."
• On March 7, the Kerala government ordered a Crime Branch inquiry into Jaleel's death. The government also ordered a magisterial inquiry as per the guidelines of the National Human Rights Commission.
• On June 21, Jaleel's relatives had accused that the inquiry had been sabotaged.
Probe status
• Crime Branch and magisterial inquiry reports have not been published yet.
November 25, 2016: Kuppu Devaraj and Ajitha killed
• Thunderbolts had gunned down two Maoists in an encounter in the forests of Nilambur close to the Kerala-Tamil Nadu border on November 25, 2016. Kuppu Devaraj was a senior member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), and Ajitha was a woman leader of the group’s Karnataka wing.
• After the encounter, the police said: “The Maoists had fired at us first. We just retaliated. A few explosives, materials to make explosives, high-tech gadgets, some demonetised currency notes, a solar panel, a Wi-Fi router and some provisions were recovered from the site of the encounter."
• On November 26, human rights activists and family of the dead alleged foul play in the murders. “Their bodies had more than one bullet marks and it showed that gunshots were intended to kill them. Moreover, none of the cops sustained injuries.”
• The encounter killings even created fissures in the ruling Left Democratic Front. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan supported the police action while his coalition partner CPI's leader Kanam Rajendran decried the killings.
“No government has a right to kill the voices that dissent. Such steps to do away with the people who raise genuine issues of the downtrodden should never be adopted by a civilised society,” Kanam said.
• On January 16, 2019, The Times of India had reported that Kerala Human Rights Commission rejected inquiry report of the Malappuram district police chief on the death of Maoists
Probe status
• The magisterial probe has been completed. The crime branch probe has not been completed so far.
