Kolkata: A grisly sight, security forces bringing out the bodies of eight dead Maoists, including three women hogtied to bamboo poles. This, after the Maoists were killed in an encounter at the Ranja forest in West Midnapore district on Wednesday.
Civil rights activists are so aggrieved that they are planning to go to court.
"Even as a human being, it is shocking to see the way body has been taken, bestial cruelty, mistreatment of a dead body. The way it has been carried out is a violation of human rights. It's barbaric, uncivilized, and we are contemplating legal action," said Sujato Bhadra, a human rights activist.
The petition will be filed against the Joint Security Forces Commander, the Superintendent of Police of West Midnapore and the West Bengal government.
But the state's Director General of Police (DGP) Bhupinder Singh, in an SMS to NDTV said, "Unlike the Maoists, we value human dignity in life and death. We are looking into the compelling and possibly mitigating circumstances in which the corpses had to be carried out of an operational zone fraught with the danger and risk of counter-ambush, firing by retreating Maoists, land-mines and IEDs planted along the approach roads and paths."
"Even if the casualty had been one of us, we have also had no option but to remove him from the encounter zone in the same manner," added the DGP.
Not just the West Bengal Police, but other security forces, including the Army, are forced to carry the dead in this manner when operating in far-flung areas, but the exposure of these methods is generally avoided to prevent controversy.
Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya has expressed displeasure at the means adopted and an enquiry has been ordered. However, according to sources, there has been no official reprimand from the Union Ministry of Home Affairs.