Chhattisgarh Police cremated the dead bodies of two top Maoist leaders–Nambala Keshava Rao and Sajja Venkata Nageshwara Rao–on 26th May, alleging them to be “unclaimed,” as their families camped at the hospital.
This took place after almost a week of hardships endured by the families, which included travel, obtaining necessary documents, getting permission from the High Court, and camping at the hospital—all while the state governments of Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh refused to hand over the bodies due to the possibility of the memorialisation and celebration of the Maoist leaders, which they feared would attract more people to the movement.
On 22nd May, as Amit Shah shared his celebratory message on X, 27 Maoists were killed by the CRPF and DRG in the Abujhmad Forest in Chhattisgarh as part of Operation Black Forest, one of whom was the 70-year-old General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) – Nambala Keshava Rao, alias Basavaraju.
The family of Keshava Rao immediately set out from their hometown of Jiyyannapet in Srikakulam, Andhra Pradesh, against the wishes of the Superintendent of Police, who did not want the body of the deceased leader to be brought to Andhra Pradesh. Rao’s younger brother, Nambala Ramprasad, said that they were stopped before they even began their journey to Narayanpur, where the deceased Maoists were being kept.
Despite reaching Narayanpur the next day (May 22nd), the family had to head back due to unceasing phone calls asking them to return to their hometown.
Upon return, Keshava Rao’s family, together with the family of the deceased Sajja Venkata Nageshwara Rao, approached the Andhra Pradesh High Court on May 24th, which passed the order to hand over the bodies to the families in order to conduct the funerals in their hometowns.
The governments of Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh agreed to do so after the completion of the post-mortem.
However, two days after the court order, the police decided to cremate the bodies of the two leaders along with five other unclaimed bodies, alleging that the families were unable to prove familial relations.
The families state that they had documents to prove blood relations, but that the police were asking for more, seemingly impossible, proof of relation.
Ramprasad said to The Wire, “We’ve been waiting here for the past three days after submitting our Aadhaar cards to the Narayanpur police to confirm our identity. Yet, they continue to send us back and forth between the district hospital and the police authorities, without any clear assurance of handing over the body. Interestingly, the police officials are now asking us to provide a recent family photograph with Keshava Rao. This is impossible as he had joined the Maoist movement nearly five decades ago. How can we produce a recent photo with him?”
The families also alleged that the bodies were kept in the open, instead of in cold storage, and left exposed to decay.
This comes after several activists, human rights organisations, and political parties condemned the extra-judicial killing of the Maoist leaders and urged the handing over of the dead bodies to their respective families.
The Coordination Committee for Peace, a collective of academicians, human rights advocates, and social activists, has stated that the treatment of the bodies of deceased Maoists by the government violates Article 21 of the Constitution of India, and several international conventions and resolutions.
