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NEW DELHI: India's communists and a human rights group condemned Saturday the killing of a top Maoist militant and suggested that the shoot out in which he was killed was staged by security forces.
Indian police has been in the spotlight over “fake encounters” or staged killings in the recent past. In 2009, New York-based Human Rights Watch interviewed more than 80 police officers and said nearly all believed illegal detention, torture and even killing were legitimate tools for law enforcement.
Police said Maoist military commander Koteshwar Rao, also known as Kishnenji, died Thursday in a gunbattle in a forest in the eastern state of West Bengal, striking a major blow to extreme left-wing fighters who control impoverished but mineral-rich swathes of the country.
“The story of the encounter appears to be fake,” Gurudas Dasgupta of the Communist Party of India said, asking for a government probe into whether the militant leader had been killed in “cold blood”.
The government released photographs of the slain 58-year-old militant commander lying in a pool of blood next to a machine-gun while bullet marks on trees and nearly 100 spent cartridges marked the scene of the shootout.
The International Campaign Against War on the People in India charged in a statement that the killing was “a planned assassination”.
Kishenji, 58, who is described as the number three in the Maoist cadre hierarchy by the government was held responsible for the death of dozens of police.
The leader had evaded capture for more than 30 years, often appeared on television with his back to the camera, his head covered by a scarf and a rifle slung over one shoulder.
The government describes the Maoist movement as India's biggest internal security threat.
The Maoist insurgency, which began in 1967, feeds off land disputes, police brutality and corruption, and is strongest in the poorest and most deprived areas of India, many of which are rich in natural resources.
