HYDERABAD: A division bench of the Hyderabad High Court on Wednesday directed the Telangana police to preserve the bodies of eight Maoists who were killed in an encounter in the forests of Bijapur district of Chhattisgarh on Tuesday.
The bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Dilip B Bhosale and Justice P Naveen Rao was dealing with a petition filed by Professor G Laxman, president of Civil Liberties Committee, seeking to declare the killing of eight Maoists, including three women, by the para military forces during a joint combing operation with the state police as illegal, arbitrary and in violation of Article 14 and 21 of the Constitution. Postmortem was conducted in a hasty manner, he pointed out.
Submitting that the bodies were presently kept at Area Hospital at Bhadrachalam in Khammam district, petitioner’s counsel V Raghunath urged the court to direct the authorities to preserve the bodies at Osmania General Hospital to conduct re-postmortem with a team of forensic experts and also in accordance with the guidelines of National Human Rights Commission and to hand over the bodies to family members.
The bench directed the state police to preserve the bodies of the deceased till further orders and posted the matter to Thursday for hearing.