Supreme Court declares top Maoist leader encounter genuine

New Delhi, Mar 16 (ANI): The Supreme Court on Friday said that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe has established as genuine the killing of top Maoist leader Cherukuri Rajkumar alais Azad and journalist Hemchandra Pandey by Andhra Pradesh Police in July 2010.

Justices Aftab Alam and Ranjana Prakash Desai said that the CBI investigation did not seem to bear that the encounter was fake.

Both Azad and Pandey were killed by the Andhra police in 2010 in the Adilabad forests near Maharashtra-Andhra border. The manner in which, they were killed, had been questioned by human rights activists

Azad was a member of the central committee of the outlawed Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) and carried a reward of 1.2 million rupees on his head.

Azad was linked to the Maoist movement for over 35 years and used to write articles for magazines on Maoist ideology. (ANI)