Kerala: Plea to re-examine slain Maoists' bodies dismissed

MALAPPURAM: The Manjeri district and sessions court on Monday dismissed the plea seeking a re-postmortem of the bodies of Maoist leaders Kuppu Devaraj and Ajitha who were killed in a police shootout in the Nilambur forests two weeks ago. The court  also ordered the police to hand over the bodies to the relatives or dispose of them as per the procedures  if they refuse to accept them. The petition was jointly moved by D. Sreedhar, brother of Devaraj, and rights organisations after the allegations of fake encounter  emerged regarding the anti-Maoist police operation in the deep interiors of the forests on November 24.

The autopsy was already conducted  by the experts of Kozhikode Medical College and there was no need for a re-examination of the bodies,  judge S.S. Vasan said in the ruling. Petitioner Sreedhar had also urged the court that  a re-examination should be done in the presence of N.R. Prithvi Raj, a Chennai-based forensic expert, to correlate the details of the autopsy done at the Kozhikode Medical College. Meanwhile, Malappuram  collector Amit Meena  begun a magisterial probe into the killing of Maoists on Sunday.

Ajitha (right) in Nilambur forests on Nov 24.

A team of officials led by Meena had visited the encounter spot, around 10 km from the Padukka forest station of the Karulai range under tight security watch of the Thunderbolt force and armed police. Earlier, the government had assigned Perinthalmanna sub-collector Jafar Malik, who carried out the first inquest of the bodies in the forest, to conduct the magisterial probe. This had drawn flak from the rights organisations pointing out the anomaly in a probe by the same officer who conducted inquest as per the code of criminal procedures. The government later assigned the task to the district collector.