NEW DELHI: PUCL strongly condemned the registration of FIR by the AP Forest Department against a team of human rights activists which visited the site of the encounter in Chandragiri Mandal in Chittoor district of AP where police shot dead 20 woodcutters.
In a statement, the PUCL said it had learnt that the forest department officials booked criminal cases against 12 human rights activists for visiting the site inside Reserved Forests without permission.
Terming the action "bullying", PUCL General Secretary V Suresh said the human rights team was visiting the encounter site "only for the purpose of gathering information about the actual location and understand the context of the firing so as to check the veracity of the police story that they fired in 'self defence' against hundreds of wood cutters who rained stones, sticks, sickles and arrows against them". He also hit out at the Andhra Pradesh Government "which does not want the truth of the encounters to be exposed".