Raipur, July 5 (IANS) Undeterred by union Home Minister P. Chidambaram’s cold response to its initial findings in the alleged staged Korasuguda gunfight, the Congress’s Chhattisgarh unit Thursday indicated it would raise the 17 tribals’ killing in the monsoon session of the assembly beginning July 12.
Talking to IANS Thursday, Chhattisgarh Pradesh Congress Committee president Nandkumar Patel said the party’s probe team had found that most of the killed Maoists were actually poor farmers.
“The 11-member investigation team set up to unravel the truth of the Korsaguda fake gunfight has found clear-cut lapses on the part of state government, which failed to provide safety and security to the life of poor tribal populace,” Patel said.
“Most of the dead, including seven minors, were poor villagers engaged in farming as their voter IDs and family ration cards showed,” he said.
His party colleague and Leader of Opposition Ravindra Choubey said during the assembly session they would “definitely seek answers from the Raman Singh government over the massacre of poor tribals, including seven minors and a woman”.
Security forces had gunned down 17 suspected Maoists allegedly when they were holding a meeting at Korsaguda village in Bijapur district of Bastar region, about 600 km south of Raipur, on June 28.
While 6 Central Reserve Police Force troopers were injured in the midnight gunbattle, five injured Maoists were also nabbed in the operation, but one of them later succumbed to injuries in hospital.
The Congress team, set up to detect the truth as the dead included minors and a woman, found none of the dead had any criminal record, and their ID proofs like voter cards and ration cards identified them as small farmers.
Names of some of the victims’ families also appeared in Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme records.
Meanwhile, the Bijapur district collector has ordered a magisterial enquiry into the killings. The probe will focus on the circumstances in which the incident occurred and whether those killed in the incident were villagers or Maoists.
