CPI Slams Maoist Encounter, Threats Against Naidu

CPI National General Secretary Suravaram Sudhakar Reddy today raised serious doubts over the legitimacy of the ongoing alleged encounter of Maoists along the Andhra Pradesh - Odisha border.

Addressing the media along with CPI Telangana State secretary Chada Venkat Reddy, former MP Aziz Pasha and Erla Narsimha at the State Party office on Friday, Sudhakar Reddy condemned the killing of Maoists at the AOB by the AP Police.

The CPI leader said that the cops had claimed that 34 Maoists were killed in during the battle of three days while the civil liberties organizations and kin of victims have alleged that the insurgents were instead either poisoned to death or killed while into custody. He claimed that the circumstantial evidence did not support the case being made by the police. He raised suspicion that the police may have arrested the maoists earlier and killed them later in cold blood in a violation of human rights.

"The CPI condemns extrajudicial killings and demands a judicial probe into the entire incident. We also condemn the attack on Manish Kunjam, CPI leader and president of All India Adivasi Mahasabha at Jagdalpur (Chhattisgarh) by Bastar IGP Kalluri. We demand an inquiry into this, too, and also into all State sponsored terror in the Adivasi areas. The bureaucracy and the government are denying civil rights and are unleashing terror on common people," he said.

However, the CPI also severely condemned the death threats levelled against Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu and his son Nara Lokesh by alleged Maoists in a letter to the AP Police earlier on October 28. The CPI said that the encounter was a failure of the system as a whole, and not individual components, and added that violence only begets violence.