In a complaint submitted to the Dantewada Superintendent of Police, Ankit Garg, villagers have accused the district police and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) of killing the village ‘mukhiya’, Madkam Masse in a staged encounter last week. The police and CRPF have denied these accusations, claiming that Mr. Masse was a member of the guerrilla army of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) killed in the course of an anti-Maoist operation.
‘Mukhiya’ is a term used to describe an informal hereditary position much like a village headman.
Over the last year, villagers across Dantewada have accused security forces of conducting a series of operations in which innocent civilians have been targeted. The police have denied charges in each instance and maintained that those slain were killed in the course of retaliatory fire when policemen were attacked by Maoists.
According to allegations published in the local daily, Rajasthan Patrika, and a press release issued by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, Mr. Masse was picked up from his village on August 5 by troopers from the CRPF’s 2nd Battalion on the pretext of providing information for an upcoming Civil Action Programme organised by the force. According to the Patrika report, villagers approached the CRPF camp in Kerlapal when Mr. Masse did not return to his village, but were told that Mr. Masse was not in CRPF custody.
The next day, the police and CRPF announced that a uniformed Maoist guerilla had been killed, and two CRPF troopers injured, in an encounter in the early hours of August 6 in the nearby villager of Neelavaram. Two weapons were also allegedly recovered from the spot.
“We tried our best to identify the body of the slain Maoist, but no one came forward,” said Dantewada SP Ankit Garg in a telephone conversation with this correspondent. The body, Mr. Garg said, was photographed and subsequently buried.
Yesterday, villagers from Chikpal looked at the photographs at the police station at Sukma, identified the corpse as that of Mr. Masse, and accused the police and CRPF of killing him in cold blood in a police camp. Villagers have blocked traffic along the Dantewada-Sukma road, demanding that the body be exhumed and handed over to his family. Police sources said the body could be exhumed on the directions of the sub-divisional magistrate, who is presently believed to be away on leave.
Both the CRPF and police have maintained that Mr. Masse was not picked up from his village in Chikpal, but was killed in a “genuine encounter” in Neelavaram and weapons and a Maoist uniform were recovered from his person. “The CRPF and police had gone to conduct a CASO [Cordon and Search Operation] at Neelavaram village on August 6,” said Inspector General Pankaj Singh, who heads CRPF operations in Chhattisgarh, “There was an exchange of fire in which two of our men were injured. The body [of Masse] wasrecovered during a search after the firing ceased.”
A magisterial inquiry has been ordered into the incident, in accordance with guidelines issued by the National Human Rights Commission.