Human rights organisations Human Rights Watch (HRW) and civil rights group Human Rights Forum (HRF) have demanded criminal prosecution of police personnel involved in the killing of three Maoists on June 18 in the forests of Rampachodavaram mandal, Alluri Sitharama Raju (ASR) district, Andhra Pradesh. According to them, the Maoists were killed in a staged encounter.
In a joint statement released on Monday, July 21, HRF and HRW called for an independent investigation into the incident, either by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) or under the supervision of the Supreme Court. “The investigation cannot be entrusted to the local police or special forces, since they themselves are implicated in the crime,” the rights groups stated.
A three-member fact-finding team from HRF and HRW visited the site on July 18 and spoke with Adivasi residents of villages including Vemulakonda, Akuru, and Kintukuru. The team rejected the police version that the killings occurred during retaliatory firing in self-defence by the elite Greyhounds unit.
According to the rights groups, the three Maoists – Gajarla Ravi, Venkata Ravivarma Chaitanya, and Kovvasi Anju – had been camping for over two weeks in a forest area locally known as ‘Oota Mamidi’, about 3.5 km west of Kintukuru village.
The HRF-HRW team alleged that Greyhounds personnel, having obtained specific intelligence about the Maoist camp, launched an operation past midnight on June 17. They claimed the commandos surrounded the camp from the south and opened fire at daybreak, killing all three Maoists in what they described as a “targeted execution.”
“There was no exchange of fire. The Greyhounds could have easily apprehended the three alive but chose to kill them instead,” the statement read.
The groups further alleged that the post-mortem at Rampachodavaram Area Hospital was intentionally delayed, forcing the families to wait for hours. “It was only after sustained media pressure that the decomposed bodies were handed over late on the night of June 19. By then, the bodies were infested with worms,” the statement claimed.
Calling the incident part of a “systematic campaign” of extrajudicial killings, HRF and HRW cited figures claiming that since January 2024, over 440 Maoists and unarmed civilians, mostly Adivasis, have been killed in alleged fake encounters, particularly in Chhattisgarh.
“No democracy that claims to uphold constitutional values can legitimise such a brutal policy of state-sanctioned bloodletting,” the statement said.
The rights groups urged the Union and State governments to halt counterinsurgency operations that result in extrajudicial killings and instead take Maoist overtures for peace talks seriously. “There is a rare political opening to mitigate suffering among Adivasis and address deep-rooted grievances,” they added.