Hyderabad, July 03: In a major blow to the CPI (Maoist), which is currently giving nightmares to the Centre, one of its topranking leaders and spokesperson, Cherukuri Rajkumar alias Azad, was gunned down by the Andhra Pradesh police in the forests of Adilabad district early Friday.
The “encounter,” in which a courier was also killed, came just two days after the rebels massacred 27 CRPF jawans in Narayanpur district, Chhattisgarh.
Maoist sympathisers cried foul accusing the police of killing Azad in coldblood at a time when the Centre sought to engage in talks with the Maoist group through the same man.
According to them, Azad, a member of the CPI (Maoist) Central Committee, was picked up from Sitabadi locality in Nagpur around noon on Thursday when a courier went to meet him to escort him to Bastar in Dandakaranya forest belt. “A police team, which apparently kept track of Azad’s movements, nabbed both and bundled them into a vehicle, interrogated them for a few hours before bumping them off in the forests of Adilabad district in Andhra Pradesh,” revolutionary writer Vara Vara Rao alleged. He moved the High Court which directed the police to allow Azad’s 80yearold mother to see her son’s body before the postmortem was conducted on Saturday.
The police, however, maintained that it was a genuine encounter. Adilabad district SP Pramod Kumar told reporters that they had spotted a few Maoists in Jogapur forests at Vankidi around 10 p.m. on Thursday. “We spotted them through night vision binoculars and when asked to surrender, they opened fire which triggered a gunbattle,” he said. The exchange of fire, which started at 10:30 p.m. continued intermittently till 3 a.m. “In the morning, our personnel searched the area and found two bodies. One of them was later identified as Azad,” he said.
The drive from Sitabadi to Vankidi takes about four hours. Significantly, when a group of mediapersons from some TV channels left this morning for the place where the supposed exchange of fire occurred, the policemen themselves were not in a position to identify the spot. Some channels claimed that even the AK47 found at the site did not belong to Azad.
Finally, when the policemen did take them to the “encounter spot”, there was no evidence to suggest that an exchange of fire took place. Not a single empty shell was found nor did the scene appear disturbed though the police claimed the exchange of fire went on for over four hours.
The police claimed that they had recovered an AK47 rifle, a 9mm pistol and two kit bags. Following the killing of Azad, the police in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Orissa, Bihar and AP were put on high alert anticipating retaliation from the rebels.
Police officials said 58yearold Azad, who was carrying a reward of Rs 12 lakh on his head, was involved in a number of sensational murders including that of late home minister Alimineti Madhav Reddy, IPS officers KS Vyas and Umesh Chandra and MLA Chittem Narsi Reddy.
He was also said to have masterminded the assassination attempts on former chief ministers N Chandrababu Naidu and N Janardhan Reddy. “There are hundreds of cases against him throughout the country,” a senior police official said.
Azad, who belonged to Nuzvid in Krishna district, had spent over 30 years in the movement.
–Agencies