RAIPUR: A team of doctors conducted a second autopsy on the body of two tribalsm including a woman, at the Government medical college in Maharani hospital in Jagdalpur district, south Chhattisgarh, on Tuesday.
The state high court on March 2 directed the Bastar administration to exhume the bodies allegedly killed in a “fake” encounter and conduct a re-post-mortem.
“The second post-mortem was conducted by doctors and the summary of the findings will be produced before the high court in a sealed envelope on Wednesday,” the hospital spokesperson Dr K L Azad told the New Indian Express.
The bodies were dug out at Gampur village in Bijapur and brought to Jagdalpur for post-mortem, which was carried out amid the presence of local police forces.
Ironically, nobody knows about the conclusions of the first post-mortem. “The police failed to produce the autopsy report during the hearing, following which the high court directed a re-post-mortem of the two bodies,” Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Sanket Thakur, who accompanied the family members of the victims to file a petition in the court, said.
Police allegedly shot dead Bheema Kadati and Sukmati Hemla in an alleged encounter at Purengal forest close to Dantewada border on January 28 and cited both were Maoists with “cases registered against them in local police stations”.
However, relatives of the dead tribals and the local villagers claimed that both were “innocent civilians”. They approached the high court seeking a second autopsy and fair probe into the incident.
The “encounter snowballed into a political issue with the opposition Congress, former chief minister Ajit Jogi’s Chhattisgarh Janata Congress and the AAP came out in open support of the villagers and led a protest march last month.
The second autopsy report is kept confidential. However, a reliable source not willing to be identified told TNIE that the findings contradicted the allegations that the eyes were gouged out and the kidneys were taken away from the bodies. “But the details will be known only after it is produced before the court,” he added.
Arjun Kadati, Bheema's brother, expressed fear that he will be targeted by the police soon. “I don’t feel secure now after approaching the high court seeking justice and fair investigation,” he told media-persons.