Naxal bodies being retrieved from the site. (Express Photo: Deepak Daware)
The Gadchirolli police have received viscera reports for 18 bodies of the alleged Naxals recovered from Indravati river following the police operation on April 23, in which 34 people were killed. “The viscera reports have clearly established that there was no trace of any poison in the bodies,” said Superintendent of Police Abhinav Deshmukh.
Deshmukh further said, “we had sent viscera of only 18 bodies that were recovered from Indravati river since in other cases, the cause of death was confirmed by the doctors who had performed the post-mortem. They all had fire arm injuries.”
A total of 40 people had died in the two back to back operations by Gadchiroli police on April 23 and 24. The first operation near Kasnasur had resulted in 34 deaths of alleged Maoists while the second at Nainar had lead to six deaths. While all six Nainar deceased had fire arm injuries, 16 from Kasnasur deaths were due to firearm injuries, four due to fire arm and drowning and 13 due to drowning only. In one case, the cause of death couldn’t be ascertained. Speculations were that the alleged Maoists may have been poisoned through food. This had led to the police preserving viscera of the drowning cases for a forensic check at Nagpur’s government forensic laboratory.
As earlier reported by The Indian Express, four different notes from four Naxal units had put out names of those killed in the operations. Of them, police were able to confirm the identity of 19 persons from their relatives. For the final confirmation of the identities of all, the police had called out relatives of those named in the Naxal lists and had taken their DNA samples. DNA samples of the dead were also taken and have been sent to the forensic lab for matching. The reports are still awaited.
The police had recovered a lot of material from the Kasnasur and Nainar spots, which included 32 memory cards found on the body of Naxal leader Srini killed at Nainar. “We have also recovered many diaries that contain names of members of the people’s revolutionary council (PRC), the village-level body of the CPI (Maoist) that contains villagers providing logistic support to the Naxals. We have got several names of the members from about 25 villages in the Perimili area from those diaries. They include the names of the eight Gattepalli villagers, who were supposed to have been killed in the Kasnasur operation,” Deshmukh said.
The eight Gattepalli villagers, which included five women and three men, had left the village a day before and haven’t since returned. With one of the deceased from Kasnasur being identified as their daughter by a Kasnasur couple, it was speculated that the remaining seven may also have died in the operation. But the final truth is yet to come out as the DNA reports are still awaited. The SP has also refuted the reports of harassment of the Gattepalli families of eight who were called to the Perimili police station recently. “The reports about they being harassed are unfounded. They had been called for taking statements,” Deshmukh said.