NEW DELHI: Noted human rights activist and president of the Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee (APCLC). K.G. Kannabiran, on Friday cautioned the Center about the grave and gruesome crimes committed by the Andhra Pradesh state government against the innocent populace in the state under the pretax to encounters”,
Briefing media persons about the recent spate of ° aimed at silencing legitimate democratic movements, Kannabiran said innocent people in village after village in the Terengganu districts of Andhra Pradesh were being butchered simply because of the suspicion that they supported the Naxalites.
He said the Janardana Reddy government has surpassed all the previous regimes in perpetrating inhuman crimes against poor, tribal and advises. “The brutality is getting more and more brazen under the present government in Hyderabad,” Kannbiran warned.
What is disturbing in the present Contest is that the state apparatus is bent on trivializing the legal system in the name of handling terrorism, he said
The recent case of a Supreme Court judge refusing to abide by certain norms or a police officer forcefully removing a patient under the pretext that he is Naxalite, are instances of how the state has trivialized the legal system in the ‘country, Kannbiran pointed out.
He said in the last 13 months of the Janardhan Reddy government about 133 persons were killed through “encounters.”
However, most of these encounters were fake as they did not take place and on the contrary, “thugs” (police) pick up innocent ‘people and killed them.
‘AS Tong as the state treats the “”Naxalite” problem some of law ‘and order, and deploys paramilitary forces to carry out in‘human killing of poor peasants in the rural areas, the repercussions ‘are bound to be widespread, he said. The misuse of power by the police would only increase lawlessness.
Article extracted from this publication >> February 28, 1992
