Gadchiroli encounter a massacre, says NGO

The Civil Liberties Monitoring Committee, a Hyderabadbased NGO, has debunked the government’s claim of an encounter with Maoists in the jungles of Gadchiroli district in Maharashtra on April 22 and 23 as a massacre.

In a press statement, it claimed the security forces carried out the massacre involving many innocent villagers a few days after Prime Minister Modi’s visit of the area.

While the security forces claimed to have eliminated 40 Maoists, detained many as part of the Operation Green Hunt and naming it as ‘Operation Samadhan,’ the committee said those killed were unarmed villagers, including some Maoists, who were attending a marriage function.

Many villagers are still missing and that indicates that they may in the custody of the security forces, the committee said, alleging that those from the Maoist cadre were poisoned and bullets were pumped into their bodies before throwing them in the Indravati River.

“It seems that the massacre is still continuing because no one is permitted to visit the deep forest area which is seized by the security personnel,” the committee said, strongly condemning inhuman killings of Maoists and villagers and the security personnel celebrating it with dance on a Haryanvi song.

“This shameful act shows that the aim of security forces was not of arresting the Maoists or uphold the rule of law, but to take the revenge.”

Pointing out that a war is going on between the government and the Maoists, the committee said even the norms of the war crimes were violated, like “the poisoning, not giving any chance to surrender, firing with the intention to kill unarmed people using under barrel grenade launcher (UBGLs).” Ne Delhi