Tirupati encounter: Cops told to hand over documents to SIT
According to the members of the anti-smuggling task force of AP Police, the woodcutters attacked them when they were confronted and that they had opened fire in self-defence.
The Andhra Pradesh Director General of Police on Monday directed the Tirupati (Urban) SP to hand over all the documents related to the firing on woodcutters in Seshachalam forests on April 7 to the Special Investigation Team. The eight-member SIT, headed by Inspector General of Police Ravi Shankar Ayyanar, was constituted to investigate the incident in which 20 woodcutters, who were allegedly smuggling Red Sanders, were killed in the encounter.
According to the members of the anti-smuggling task force of AP Police, the woodcutters attacked them when they were confronted and that they had opened fire in self-defence.
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However, witnesses claimed that the people killed in the alleged encounter were actually taken off a bus by police and were later shot in cold blood. The widow of one of the woodcutters had lodged a murder complaint at Chandragiri police station against the task force personnel.
On April 15, the state informed the court that a murder case had been registered on the alleged encounter on April 7. Additional Advocate General Dammalapati Srinivas told a division bench that the case was filed on the basis of a complaint filed by the widow of Muniammal, stating that her husband Sashi was going to find work when a team of AP police took him away and shot him dead.
Source:: Indian Express