Raipur: Why are the police reluctant to hand over top Maoist leader Nambala Keshav Rao’s body to his relatives?
Rao, better known as Basavaraju, was the general secretary of the banned CPI (Maoist) and carried a Rs 1 crore bounty on his head. He was shot dead in an encounter with security forces in Narayanpur, Chhattisgarh, on Thursday.
His family members are now shunting between Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh and Narayanpur with a high court order. His two brothers Dhilleswara Rao and Ram Prasad are keen to take back Basavaraju’s body back to Jiyannapeta village in Srikakulam for the last rites.
“We have been trying to get his body. We met senior police officials in both the Narayanpur and Srikakulam districts in this regard. However, they denied our request, saying it is a policy matter of the government,” Dhilleswara has said.
According to him, the family moved the Andhra Pradesh High Court on Friday and got an order in their favour. Authorities in Chhattisgarh are not bound to abide by an order of the Andhra Pradesh High Court though.
“My brother Ram Prasad, along with some relatives, went to Narayanpur and presented a copy of the High Court’s order to the authorities. Still, there was no positive response from the police,” Dhilleswara added.
Ram Prasad claimed that they have been camping at Narayanpur for three days. “We submitted our Aadhaar cards to the Narayanpur police to confirm our identity. Yet, they continue to send us back and forth between the district hospital and the police authorities, without any clear assurance of handing over the body. The police are now asking us to provide a recent family photograph with Keshav Rao. This is impossible as he had joined the Maoist movement nearly five decades ago. How can we produce a recent photograph with him,” he said.
Basavaraju, a BTech from the Regional Engineering College (now National Institute of Technology) in Warangal, joined the Naxalite movement in the 1970s.
One reason behind the dilly-dallying by the authorities could be that they do not want Basavaraju to be treated as a martyr. All Left parties, including the CPI(M) and CPI have condemned the killing. There is a possibility that these parties will make a spectacle of Basavaraju’s funeral, inspiring others to join Left Wing Extremism.
The Left parties are now planning to move the Supreme Court with a prayer to hand over the body to the family.
