Semmaram Encounter Killings Fact Finding Report2

Tamil Research Institution (TRI)
V. Were these killings unpremeditated or were they planned murders? It is
impossible to give the Andhra police the benefit of the doubt, and to say that only
some members of the Task Force over-reacted to an attack on them with sticks and
stones, using lethal and disproportionate force in retaliation, in which 20 lives were
tragically lost. The reports that the fact finding team received, particularly from the
three men who were companions of 12 of the men who were killed, and narrowly
escaped their fate, points to something far more sinister and grave, the abduction,
torture and murder by the Task Force of 20 completely innocent men, all of them
desperately poor migrant workers from Tamil Nadu, 13 of whom were also from the
Scheduled Tribes.
Also, it is categorically clear from the testimony of Ilangovan and the APRS-STF
personnel as well as the statements by the family members of the deceased victims
that all 20 people were tortured and executed in a planned operation. Relying on the
article in the magazine ‘Nakeeran’, on the revelations made by the APRS-STF
personnel, we are forced to find truth in the version put forth that the orders of
execution were passed by none other than the Chief Minister of AP to the DGP and
then to DIG Dr. M. Kanta Rao who then ordered his men to follow suit. Hence,
following the principle of command and responsibility, the Chief Minister, the DGP
and the DIG will be jointly and severally criminally responsible for commissioning the
extra judicial killing of the 20 poor villagers hailing from Tamilnadu if this is
independently investigated.
VI.
Correlating the statements of the three witnesses, the following conclusions can
be drawn –
i) 11 innocent men, travelling in search of work, who had committed no crime, were
“abducted” and taken into ‘police custody’ by armed and unarmed policemen,
who stopped and boarded public transport in Andhra Pradesh, or picked them up
from public places near Tirupati on the night of the 6 th April, without being
questioned or prevented from doing so and totally contrary to the provisions of
arrest as under sections 41A, 41B, 41C, 41D, 53, 60 and 60A of the Criminal
Procedure Code;
ii)
iii)
though all these armed men were not in police uniform, and cannot be identified
as such, the fact finding team presumes that armed gangsters cannot roam
around in Andhra cities, or carry out abductions so brazenly. Hence the
conclusion that these were arrests;
the fact finding team has seen for itself that reinforcements sent to bolster the
Task Force unit which was blocking its entry to the forest on the 14 th April arrived
in mufti, but carrying rifles; this appears to be standard practice for the APRS-
STF;
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