A day after the Sirpurkar Commission's inquiry report established that the Cyberabad police — under the then Commissioner VC Sajjanar — had staged an ‘encounter’ of the four Disha* rape and murder case suspects (including three minors), the Telangana Women and Transgender Organizations Joint Action Committee (TWTOJAC) demanded on May 21 that a First Information Report (FIR) be immediately registered against all the policemen, specifically named and indicted by the Commission, and they be arrested. The Supreme Court had set up the Commission in December 2019 to probe the extrajudicial killings following the intervention of the TWTOJAC.
The police had shot dead four rape and murder suspects – Mohammed Arif, Jollu Shiva, Jollu Naveen and Chintakunta Chennakeshavulu – on December 6, 2019. The four suspects were accused of raping and killing a veterinary doctor, Disha at Chattanpally near Shadnagar, Hyderabad.
“We urge the Honourable High Court to take steps for prosecution of the ten policemen on fast track to fix accountability of all police personnel, including ascribe command responsibility,” the JAC said on Saturday. The Commission, in its report, said that ten police officers – Vasam Surender, Assistant Commissioner of Police, Shadnagar; Konda Narasimha Reddy, Circle Inspector, Amangal; Kore Venkateswarlu, Sub-Inspector, Nandigama; Shaik Lal Madar, Sub-Inspector; Kocherla Ravi, Sub-Inspector; Mohammed Sirajuddin, head constable; Dharmakar Janakiram, head constable; Saidupally Aravind Goud, police constable; Balu Rathod, police constable; and Deverashetty Srikanth, police constable – should face action for the extrajudicial killings, and should be tried for murder.
“…The different acts committed by each of them [police officers] were done in furtherance of common intention to kill the deceased suspects,” the Commission of Inquiry report said.
The TWTOJAC also demanded a speedy investigation into the brutal murder of the 26-year-old veterinarian Disha, which, according to them, was invisibilised following the killings of the four suspects.
“We demand that the families of all the four persons killed be provided exemplary compensation by the state, as well as government employment to one person in each family. We demand that the state government take all necessary measures to safeguard rights of women through due process of law. We strongly condemn that in the name of ‘ensuring safety and freedom for women’, the police and state are creating lawlessness and circumventing the rule of law, by resorting to extrajudicial killings of accused, which can never bring justice to the wronged women/survivors of violence and their families,” the TWTOJAC said. The statement further added, “We remind the senior police officers, political leaders and celebrities who applauded this fake encounter (sic), that as social activists, we will hold them responsible and accountable to secure our right to justice, while challenging unconstitutional methods of ‘seeking justice’.”
On December 6, 2019, early in the morning, the suspects were taken to the crime spot in Chattanpally, where they were shot dead. The police had then claimed that they took the suspects for scene recreation, and that they had attempted to escape by attacking them and seizing their weapons, forcing them to retaliate. The Commission said that the police version of these events had many discrepancies. It concluded that the police version was “concocted and unbelievable.”
Among the four suspects – Jollu Shiva, Jollu Naveen and Chintakunta Chennakeshavulu – were minors at the time of their death, the Commission concluded. The Commission said that the police clearly knew that Jollu Shiva (15) and Chennakeshavulu (17) were minors as the police had visited their school and checked the school records to ascertain their date of birth.
The police had alleged that at the site of the killings, the suspects tried to escape by first throwing mud on the police personnel present. This claim was found to be absent from the statements of some of the police officers present. The Commission also noted that it would be strange to throw soil into the police team’s eyes and try to escape, considering the significant number of armed policemen (10 of them) present.
The photos and videos of the location showed that it was fallow land covered with weeds, and picking up enough soil to throw into the police officers’ eyes would be impossible, the Commission report said. Besides, there was no mention of soil in the inquest report, and it wasn’t found on the police uniforms and in the hands of the deceased suspects. The panel concluded that this part of the police version is “absolutely unbelievable”, and an “embellishment … introduced only to give a plausible explanation that the deceased suspects could escape from the custody of such a contingent of armed police party.”