Seshachalam Encounter: Encounter Facts to Reach NHRC

 By J Shanmugha Sundaram/ Published: 23rd April 2015

VELLORE:  People’s Watch, Tamil Nadu (PWTN) (a Human Rights NGO founded by social activists in 1995, based in Madurai) will be submitting a 76-page interim report on the alleged Seshachalam Reserve Forest encounter on April 7, to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) in Hyderabad on Thursday.

In the aftermath of the killing of 20 men from Tamil Nadu, PWTN commissioned a high-powered team to probe the alleged encounter between Red Sander Anti-Smuggling Task Force (RSASTF) and the workers.

“Prima facie evidence flattens the ‘encounter theory’ of the AP police in every single aspect,” Executive Director of PWTN and one of the eight fact-finding members of the team, Henri Tiphagne told Express.

The other seven members include retired Bombay High Court Judge Hosbet Suresh, former member of NHRC, Satyabrata Pal, former DGP of Border Security Force, E N Rammohan, Ramnad MLA Jawahirullah, Advocate B S Ajeetha, forensic expert, Dr Savior Selva Suresh and Director of People’s Watch, Mathew Jacob.

The high-level team interviewed the victims’ family, police officials and people’s representatives in Tiruvannamalai and Dharmapuri in TN, Chitoor and Tirupathi in Andhra Pradesh during its two-day fact finding mission on April 14 and 15.

They recorded accounts of three eye-witnesses, Paramatha Sekhar (54) of Murugapadi, M Ilango (22) of Melkanavayur, and Balachandran of Sitherimalai, including producing them before the NHRC to record their statements.

The report states that prima facie evidence points to “abduction, custodial torture and cold-blooded murder by the AP police.” AP police, in the two FIRs 42 and 43 relating to the two separate encounters that took place two kilometres apart, recorded the fact that they occurred between 5.30 am and 6 am on April 7.

However, the PWTN interim report points out that the 20 victims had left their homes in their villages after 1 pm on April 6. It seems implausible for them to have travelled a distance of almost 300 kms, (which would have taken a minimum of 12 hours, considering they were using public transportation), and then logged as many red sanders trees they had been accused of logging and then transporting the logs to the alleged ‘encounter area’, 3 kms away.

“It clearly exposes the glaring falsehood of the AP police,” said Tiphagne and also stated that there were no tell-tale sign of the “so called encounters” in the two spots -Cheekatigala Kona (where nine woodcutters were killed) and Sachinodi Banda (11 loggers killed) - in the Seshachalam Reserve Forest of Chandragiri in AP.

Calling it was a cold blooded and premeditated murders, Mr Pal stated that the AP police lying through their teeth. While another member of the team and former police officer Rammohan called it as a “shameful act of AP police”.