Three Maoists fear fake encounter, go on fast

Coimbatore: The five Maoists, who were arrested in Coimbatore, went on a fast on Thursday, claiming that they feared that they would be killed in a fake police encounter. As the Maoist couple Roopesh and Shyna were taken to Tirupur for investigation early in the morning, the three others — J.  Anup, 31, C. Veeramani alias Easwaran, 60 and C. Kannan, 46 — who were at the Police Recruits School here went on a fast.

“They did not eat anything since morning suspecting that the police have separated Roopesh and his wife from them with a plan to execute them. Similarly, Roopesh and his wife also did not eat. After fighting hunger pangs since morning, all the five took food only at night after Roopesh was brought back from Tirupur,” said K. Kesavan, an advocate, who met them on Friday evening. The court had ordered an advocate to meet the five persons daily to ensure that they were not tortured by the investigating officials.

The Maoists did not have any complaints with the process of investigation. “Only Shyna was a bit uncomfortable as he had some health issues. Besides her toothache due to a decayed tooth, she also suffers from headaches as her spectacles she was wearing had gone missing. A slew of tests was done on her and treatment will be decided based on those medical reports from Saturday,” said sources.

Shyna also claimed that the police were harassing ‘innocent’ people like her house owner in Tirupur and her neighbours on the pretext of conducting an investigation.Meanwhile, a middle aged woman, who tried to click a photo of Shyna, when she was taken to the Coimbatore Medical College and Hospital (CMCH) for a check-up, was pulled up by the police. The woman had had clicked the Maoist with her mobile phone just out of curiosity. The police who noticed her act had immediately seized the phone, but gave it back after coming to know that she did not have any malicious intentions.