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G Vinayak in Guwahati
The Assam Human Rights Commission has registered a suo moto case against the state police on the 'controversial' encounter in Guwahati on Wednesday in which two 'dreaded militants' of the banned United Liberation Front of Asom, allegedly involved in the mortar attack in Dispur on October 27, were killed.
Stung by the intervention of the rights panel, an embarrassed Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi ordered the police to 'apprehend extremists alive'.
The government also shunted out Guwahati Superintendent of Police Paresh Neog and Additional Superintendent of Police Rana Bhuyan after the rights panel registered a case.
Neog -- charged with 'dramatising' the entire incident in front of hordes of photojournalists and TV crews -- has been transferred to Lakhimpur as SP.
Lakhimpur Superintendent of Police H C Nath has been appointed the new city SP, while Bhuyan has been transferred as additional SP, Dibrugarh.
He replaces Sanjit Krishna, who has been transferred as additional SP (security) in the city. City additional SP Bibekananda Das will take over from Bhuyan.
After registering the suo moto case (4273/2002), a full bench of the AHRC comprising chairperson Justice S N Phookan sent a notice to the Assam Police chief H K Deka asking the latter to give a detailed report about the encounter before the panel within November 14.
Notice was also sent to the State Chief Secretary P K Datta. Official sources told rediff.com that the AHRC was perturbed by reports published in a section of the press about the way that encounter took place.
The rights panel also took notice of the photographs published in a section of the media where one of the slain militants was seen being carried from the incident spot by tying up his body on a bamboo pole.
With human rights groups raising a hue and cry over the incident, Gogoi even took the unusual step of 'condemning' the police action of removing the body of one of the militants by tying it to a bamboo pole.
"I express serious concern over the manner in which the city police had handled the arrest of the ULFA militants on October 30, 2002... the way in which the body of the slain extremist was carried by the city police is condemnable. You are requested to issue instruction to all SPs that bodies of the deceased should not be handled in an inhuman manner," Gogoi said in his directive to the DGP.
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