“Kishanji’s Death Big Loss but Movement will Continue”: Varavara Rao

Varavara Rao, revolutionary poet Kolkata, Nov 25 (IANS) Describing the death of top Maoist leader Kishanji as a “big loss” for the left wing rebels, Maoist ideologue P. Varvara Rao said the movement will not be affected as the deceased had nurtured leaders to take his place. “It’s a big loss as he was one of the leaders who built the movement, working from the grassroots level,” Rao told IANS on phone from Andhra Pradesh. “But the movement will not be affected as he had been building up his comrades to be the future leaders and after him one of them will take his place,” he added. “Kishanji was a great leader and a strategist and also had literary skills. He could connect to the masses well. Along with his brother he attracted hundreds of people to the movement,” Rao said. “He also shared good relations with the media. Though his leadership abilities will be missed, the movement will go on,” said the Maoist ideologue, who was considered by Kishanji as his idol. He credited Kishanji for building the rebel movement in West Bengal. “After working closely with his comrades in Andhra Pradesh, he moved to Bengal in 1990. Since then he had been building the movement there. After Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand he proved that Bengal too can be an important centre for the movement.”

Azad Encounter: “Death By An Inch… Lies By The Mile”

[“Fake encounters” have become a famous Indian government/army/police method of eliminating opposition leaders and activists, by staging the appearance of a gunfight–planting a weapon on the body of an assassinated victim.  This has been the method of elimination so many times that there is widespread suspicion of government claims of encounters when the only casualties are non-governmental and non-military.  The reference in the following article to Sohrabuddin Sheikh is to a notorious case (from 2005) of another victim of government assassination.  This article spells out the detailed investigation of the 2 July 2010 murder of Azad, the spokesperson of the Communist Party of India (Maoist).-ed]

September 6, 2010

OutlookIndia.com

Will Azad become Congress’s Sohrabuddin? His post-mortem suggests he was killed in cold blood.

Saikat Datta

Dead men tell no tales. But when the deceased is Chemkuri Azad Rajkumar, the manner of death can speak volumes. The Maoist leader’s post-mortem report, which Outlook has now accessed, categorically establishes that he died in a fake encounter. Read along with the FIR and inquest reports, it exposes the elaborate set of lies drawn by the Andhra Pradesh police to explain his death. The claimed encounter, a much-touted “gain” in the UPA government’s war against India’s “gravest internal security threat”, was in fact a cold-blooded execution by the state. Azad, a key player in the planned negotiations with the government, was picked up and shot with a handgun from a distance barely more than the size of an outstretched palm. The official version, that the Maoists were atop a hill and fired at the police party and Azad died when the cops retaliated from down below, just doesn’t add up.