HC asks Chhattisgarh govt to exhume bodies of 2 tribals,

The Chhattisgarh High Court has ordered the state government to exhume the bodies of two tribals and conduct their postmortem again on a plea by their relatives alleging that the police killed them in a fake encounter by branding them as Naxals.

"The single-judge bench ofJustice Goutam Bhaduri delivered the order yesterday on a writ petition (criminal) filed by the relatives of the deceased," Amarnath Pandey, one of the lawyers of the petitioners, said today.

Relatives said Bheema Kadti, a native of Gampud village in Bijapur district, and his sister-in-law Sukhmati Hemla, had gone to a market in Kirandul in neighbouring Dantewada district on a bicycle on January 28, but they later received information that the two were killed in a fake encounter.
 

Pandey said the police had asked the relatives of the deceased to collect their bodies from Dantewada district hospital.

However, the police had claimed the duo were Naxals and were killed in agun fight on January 29.

Subsequently, the relatives of the deceased filed the petition claiming they were not Naxals and that the encounter was staged, Pandey said.

The petitioners contended they were never provided the post-mortem reports.

According to them, the guidelines laid down by the Supreme Court in the PUCL vs the state of Maharashtra case (2014), under which autopsy should be done by two doctors in the district hospital and same should be videographed and preserved, were not followed in this case.

The high court has directed the state government that the second post-mortem of the exhumed bodies should be carried out by two doctors in a district hospital, preferably at district headquarter Jagdalpur within a week of this order as considerable time has passed.

Besides, it was also directed that the process should be videographed and subsequently the copy of the report should be submitted before the high court, the counsel said.

The matter was posted for the next hearing after four weeks.