HYDERABAD: Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu assured his Tamil Nadu counterpart O Panneerselvam that the ongoing magisterial enquiry into the Chittoor incident, in which 20 people belonging to Tamil Nadu died, would be completed without delay.
In reply to Panneerselvam who had expressed concern over the incident, Naidu said in a letter that to ascertain the facts, the state government had ordered a magisterial enquiry. “I am in receipt of your letter dated April 7 in which you expressed concern about the incident. In order to ascertain the facts, apart from conducting post-mortem to the bodies, we have also ordered a magisterial enquiry into the incident,” Naidu said in the letter.
Panneerselvam shot off a letter to Naidu immediately after the incident, demanding a “credible and speedy enquiry”.
Meanwhile, AP forest minister Bojjala Gopalakrishna Reddy once again defended the action of AP policemen in gunning down 20 woodcutters in the Seshachalam forest that led to a huge uproar across the nation. “How could it be wrong when the security personnel gunned down the smugglers who had tried to attack them when they were being prevented from smuggling precious red sanders from the forest?” he questioned.
The minister further tried to play down the agitations of various organisations and political parties in Tamil Nadu in protest against the incident, saying, “As the TN Assembly polls are just a year away, political parties in that state are trying to derive political mileage from the incident”.