After nearly two months of imprisonment 93-year-old human rights activist Ayinoor Vasu, popularly known as Grow Vasu, was reportedly acquitted by the Kunnamangalam First Class Magistrate Court on Wednesday, September 13. On July 30, Grow Vasu was arrested by the Kozhikode Medical College police for participating in a protest against the police seven years ago. Grow Vasu was protesting against the alleged fake encounter of Maoists–Koppam Devarajan and Ajitha– in Nilambur in 2016.
The protest was held outside the Medical College Hospital, Kozhikode. He was charged with unlawful assembly and obstructing the police in discharge of duty.
In November 2016, Thunderbolt, the special wing of the Kerala police, carried out an alleged ‘encounter' (act of killing in self-defence) at the Padukka forest range in Nilambur. Though the then DGP Loknath Behera claimed that the police fired at Koppam Devarajan and Ajitha after they refused to surrender, the claims are disputed by activists.
Vasu and a few other activists protested outside the mortuary of Kozhikode MCH, when their bodies were brought there in 2016. He shouted slogans against police saying it was a fake encounter.
Grow Vasu who was a part of the Naxalite movements in the 1960s, had demanded a judicial probe into the incident and had alleged that the incident was orchestrated as an encounter by the police. According to police, Vasu had a long pending warrant against him. They also said that Vasu refused to plead for bail when he was produced before the Magistrate, following which he was remanded for 14 days in judicial custody.
Previously, Vasu had undergone seven years imprisonment in Kannur Central Prison after he was arrested in the Thirunelli incident in 1970, in which Naxal leader Varghese was killed.