'Survivor' exposes red sanders 'encounter'

CHENNAI/ TIRUVANNAMALAI: Even as rights activists and Tamil Nadu politicians clamoured for a judicial inquiry into the gunning down of 20 woodcutters in the Seshachalam forest,a labourer called Sekar from Murugapandi village in Tiruvannamalai made a damning assertion: that he was the lone survivor among a group of eight men who were picked up by the Andhra police from a bus near the state border on Monday.

Several villages in Tiruvannamalai and Vellore districts, from where a majority of the slain men hailed, are abuzz with the story of Sekar's narrow escape.

"When the bus neared Nagari in Chittoor district, policemen got into the bus and dragged away the seven labourers," a villager quoted Sekar as saying. Sekar said he slipped out of the bus at the next stop and returned to his village. He soon moved out his family and remains untraceable.

READ ALSO : ​Killing of 20 'smugglers': Naidu briefs Rajnath; protests in Andhra, Tamil Nadu

Several human rights activists, meanwhile, have vowed to expose the "massacre" by holding press meets in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh on Thursday. The burn marks on the slain labourers, the bullet injuries on many of their heads, and the curious case of the 80-odd other labourers who STF said escaped continue to raise unanswered questions.

On Wednesday, the Andhra Pradesh government released a video footage showing men moving inside the forest area. The authorities wanted to establish that the woodcutters were in the red sanders forests. Janardhan, a CPI leader in AP, meanwhile, termed the footage "false evidence," saying it was shot in Mamandur forest on April 2, 3, 4 and 5.

READ ALSO: Andhra encounter: Tamil Nadu announces financial aid to victims' kin

Reporters and independent observers who visited the spot said there were too many holes in the police story. Some bodies appeared to have been dragged from another place. None of the trees on the periphery of the clearing where the bodies were found had bullet marks. While the STF said there were more than 100 people carrying logs, only about 20 logs were recovered - as many as the men killed.

A relative of a victim who came to receive the body after postmortem at SVVR Hospital in Tirupati said that the woodcutters were picked up from a bus on Monday near Nagari by police personnel, something which Sekar too affirmed.

CPI executive member Janardhan said, "The relatives who came to receive the body have based the claims on the version by a worker who was in the bus with his wife. He was not picked up because the police thought he was not part of the group."

READ ALSO: Tirupati encounter: Bus services between Tamil Nadu and Andhra remains partially affected

AP DGP J V Ramudu said the police had fired in self-defence. When reporters asked him about the burn injuries on the bodies and other points of suspicion, he said, "These are technical questions. We can give answers only after a thorough inquiry."

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