Two killed in Nov 29 Gadchiroli encounter had no Naxal link, claim villagers; police say otherwise

The encounter took place in Abujmad hills on Maharashtra-Chhattisgarh border in Bhamragad tehsil of the district, beyond the inaccessible Modemetta village. Police claimed to have busted a huge Naxal camp on top of an 812-metre-high hill and recovered a lot of material, including guns, IED blast material, three quintals of rice and other food material, a lot of Naxal literature, among others from the spot. Police said it was a gathering of around 80-100 Naxals from both sides of the border in the camp.

Villagers, however, said Prakash and Raju had no Naxal connections and had gone to the forest to collect Gurga, an intoxicant popular among local Madia-Gond tribals.

“Prakash and Raju had gone to the forest to collect Gurga around 11 am carrying their tiffins since it takes a whole day to collect it and return. They had no idea there was a Naxal camp nearby. The men didn’t return on that day and the next day, police brought their bodies to Nelgonda. They later took the bodies to Gadchiroli by a helicopter. After postmortem, police handed over the bodies to us at the nearby Dhodraj police station,” said Panda, Prakash’s elder brother. “The police had caught them while they were returning and mercilessly beat them up before shooting them dead,” he claimed.

Prakash was unmarried and is survived by Panda and another brother. Both originally belong to Chhattisgarh.

Asked why the police would kill the two if they had not been a part of the Naxal gathering, Panda said, “Because they were frustrated with the fact that they couldn’t find any Naxal at the camp. So, they had to show some success.”

At Modemetta, Raju’s wife Rukmi narrates a similar story as the youngest of her three daughters, Karishma, cuddles her and elder Permila stands close by. After Raju, she has to till a five-acre land they have to feed her children.

Villagers said some eyewitnesses from Modemetta actually saw the police dragging and beating the two in the forest on the day of the encounter.

About a month later, on December 24 evening, around 300 people from 18 villages in the area gathered near Dhodraj police station and held a sit-in protest, demanding action against the policemen who killed Raju and Prakash. They sat there till the next day and later called off the protest after Additional Superintendent of Police Mohit Garg met them.

“We have recorded statements of the relatives of the two men after the encounter who said they (Raju and Prakash) were regularly moving with the Naxals and they had seen this end coming someday. We had intelligence information that Naxals had been holding meetings in the villages since the encounter. Curiously, the protest happened a month later. We have definite information that senior Naxal leader Tarakka was at Nelgonda till 4 pm on the day they sat on protest. She had organised the villagers and had directed them to hold the sit-in. Even on December 31, Bhamragad dalam commander, Dinesh, was at Raju’s house at Modemetta. These villages are in their area of influence. They have to follow Naxal diktats, which we can understand,” said SP Shailesh Balkawde.

He added written material, recovered from the camp, “lists names of people present at the camp, which is normal practice with Naxals. It has Raju and Prakash’s names too. They were also on our record as Naxals militiamen, who typically move for three-four months with Naxals and then return to the village to do agricultural work before joining the Naxals again. They are trained in firing and also set up explosives.”

The police official said even after the 2018 Kasnasur encounter, in which 40 Naxals were killed, “the Naxals spread several canards about police saying we had first poisoned the Naxals gathered at the camp through food and had then shot them in cold blood. They had also claimed that police had killed seven civilians in the encounter. Later, they had themselves released names of all the cadres killed and admitted that it was their operational failure. So, for Naxals, it is a part of their propaganda war to discredit and demoralise the police”.

Balkawde claimed a videotaped panchnama from the spot of the encounter purportedly shows Prakash in uniform, Raju in a civil dress carrying a whistle and a big-dial watch, which is usually with a senior cadre or with a sentry. The SP said both men were identified by surrendered Naxals as well. “A magisterial inquiry has been ordered,” Balkawde said. Viscera samples of the two have been sent for forensic tests. “The reports will bring the truth to fore.”