The Human Rights Forum (HRF) on Wednesday demanded that the CRPF personnel who fired upon unarmed Adivasis at Edesmeta village on May 17 must be prosecuted for murder and other crimes under IPC as well as the SC, ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989.
A fact-finding committee, which included HRF state general secretary VS Krishna, state secretary G Mohan, Khammam district unit president SK Khadar Babu, Visakhapatnam district committee member K Sudha and researcher from Mumbai Bela Bhatia visited Edesmeta in Bijapur district of Chhattisgarh on May 25, following media reports that eight Adivasis and a CRPF constable had died in an alleged encounter on May 17.
Contrary to the police version, there was no exchange of fire at Edesmeta on the night of May 17, the team members found. The people died due to indiscriminate firing by the CRPF. None of the victims are Maoists, as the police claimed . Further, the eight did not die because Maoists used them as human shield, as the police said a day later. They were gunned down by the anti-Naxal unit of the CRPF, they said.
There was no provocation for the firing. Four other Adivasis, including a minor, were injured in the firing.
The HRF members said here that the government’s policy of treating the Maoist movement as a law and order issue was not correct.
“The police, on their part, should not overstep the boundaries of law,” they said and demanded that the investigation into the incident must be handed over to the CBI.