The leaders of the AP Civil Liberties Committee (APCLC) have urged the intervention of Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu and Home Minister Vangalapudi Anita in the matter of handing over the dead bodies of top Maoist leader Nambala Kesava Rao alias Basavaraj and Naveen, who were killed in an encounter in Chhattisgarh, to their relatives.
To this end, the APCLC president and secretary Chittibabu and Chiluka Chandrasekhar wrote a letter to them on Sunday. They said that their family members have been trying to bring the bodies of the two to their native places for the last three days. In that process, they alleged that the Srikakulam district SP is creating obstacles in many ways.
They wondered that though before the AP High Court lawyers of both AP and Chhattisgarh governments and also the central government stated no problem in handing over dead bodies and the court directed family members to receive dead bodies from the Chhattisgarh police, why did the police create hurdles? They suspect that without pressure from higher authorities or political leadership, lower police cannot create such problems.
The letter clarified that Keshav Rao’s brother was waiting for his body in Chhattisgarh since Thursday morning, but Bastar IG Sundar Raj and Srikakulam SP forcibly sent him back. They said that Keshav Rao’s brother, along with the family members of another deceased Naveen, met the district SP and spoke to him for about 45 minutes, but they refused to give the bodies.
Moreover, the letter mentioned that since then, they have not only been kept under surveillance but also kept under house arrest. However, when they approached the High Court on Friday for the bodies, they said that higher authorities, who knew about this matter, were pressuring family members through lower-level police officers.
They alleged that they had put severe pressure on their family members to conduct the last rites in Chhattisgarh itself, but not to bring them to their villages in AP.
Moreover, APCLC leaders stated that their family members are being threatened by finding loopholes in the High Court orders. They said that the Srikakulam district police are already threatening the ambulance driver who went to bring their bodies.