Azad killed in ‘real’ gunfight, says Andhra police chief

HYDERABAD - Andhra Pradesh police chief R.R. Girish Kumar Saturday denied that the top Maoist leader Azad was killed in a stage-managed gunfight and termed it as a “real and genuine” one.

The director general of police said a section of vested interest groups at the behest of the outlawed Communist Party of India (Maoist) were making false and baseless allegations against the police by misquoting the contents of the post-mortem examination (PME) report and the first information report (FIR).

“There are absolutely no contradictions either in PME report or in the FIR. The PME report is being falsely misinterpreted by Naxal-(Maoist) backed civil rights activists. There is absolutely nothing in the post mortem report to indicate that the firing was resorted to at point blank range,” the police chief said in a statement.

An exchange of fire took place between police and armed Maoists in the jungles of Adilabad district on the intervening night of July 1 and 2 in which Cherukuri Rajkumar alias Azad and Hema Chandra Pandey alias Jitender died.

Girish Kumar said the police have followed the National Human Rights Commission guidelines in letter and spirit. The PME report and all the other evidence will be subjected to scrutiny by competent judicial and quasi-judicial authorities, he added.

“The Maoists having lost their most important cadre Azad, whom the Maoists themselves termed as mind and soul of the party, are unable to digest the loss and started resorting to Goebbelsian campaign by propagating utter falsehood repeatedly through their frontal organisations like APCLC (Andhra Pradesh Committee for Civil Liberties) etc.”

The police chief said such frontal organisations were defending Maoists, who have killed thousands of innocent civilians. He alleged that Azad had masterminded killings of thousands of people including women and children.