Several human rights activists had urged against the hasty cremation of the body of Pallakonda Raju — the accused in the rape and murder of a 6-year-old girl in Hyderabad — until an independent autopsy is conducted. However, the police went ahead and cremated the accused’s body on Thursday night, September 16, at Pothanagar crematorium in Warangal. Activists are now seeing this as an act to erase evidence.
Raju is accused of raping and murdering a six-year-old girl child in Hyderabad’s Saidabad. He was found dead on the railway track in Warangal’s Ghanpur on Thursday morning. While police claim that the accused killed himself by jumping in front of the Konark express train, suspicions have been raised, as Raju’s family members alleged that the police have orchestrated the ‘suicide.’
Statements by Telangana politicians, too, fuelled this theory. Earlier this week, Telangana Labour Minister Malla Reddy had remarked that the rape accused would be definitely caught and killed in a staged encounter. Then, IT Minister KT Rama Rao made a statement that the accused was arrested immediately after the crime, but he retracted it later.
Padi Kaushik Reddy, a member of the ruling party also credited Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao for ‘killing’ Raju. “KCR will not speak in words... but with action. Whether it be in the Disha incident or now in this incident.” KCR’s silence will always be frightening,” Kaushik wrote on his Facebook on Thursday.
Shortly after police announced that the rape accused was found dead, activists from Women and Transgender Organisations Joint Action Committee (WT-JAC), an umbrella organisation of various human rights organisations, met MS Ramachandra Rao, the acting Chief Justice, Telangana High Court, on Thursday evening. The committee submitted a memorandum, calling for an investigation into circumstances that led to Raju’s death and sought for the transfer of investigations to an independent group of senior officers.
“The hurried manner in which body of rape and murder accused Pallakonda Raju was cremated yesterday (Thursday) by the Telangana police, the conflicting official reports of his 'arrest,' his mysterious 'disappearance' in the past few days, the subsequent 'manhunt' and declaration of 'prize money,' the public calling for an extra-judicial killing of the accused by the Labour Minister Malla Reddy and MP Revanth Reddy, and Raju's sudden 'death by suicide' on a rail track are highly suspicious. The allegations of Raju's mother, wife and sister that this is a case of 'police killing' raise grave questions on the role of the law enforcement authorities and the due processes followed. This needs a comprehensive inquiry by the State High Court as well as the National Human Rights Commission,” says Meera Sangahmitra, who is part of WT-JAC.
Meera expresses disappointment that the court did not act swiftly, like in the case of Disha encounter, where it promptly intervened and ensured that the bodies of the four accused were not cremated until the autopsy was conducted by an independent team.