Vijayawada: The Special Investigation Team constituted by the Election Commission on the poll-related violence has come up with startling facts.
The SIT chief Vineet Brijlal submitted the final report to the DGP Harish Kumar Gupta who in turn sent it to the Election Commission for its perusal.
The SIT found that on the day of polling at Tadipatri, police permitted both YSRC and TD MLA contestants to take out bike rallies and this led to the violence and Section 144 of CrPC was also flouted.
In Tirupati and Palnadu districts, vehicles belonged to the political leaders the assets of the common people were destroyed and even police vehicles were burnt. Such a situation created a feeling of fear and insecurity among the people, the SIT revealed.
The SIT further revealed that the police in Palnadu district failed to take up cases booked on poll-related violence seriously, the accused were not questioned properly and the sections booked in the cases were also not appropriate resulting in enhanced violence.
The SIT report said in some cases, the accused were shown as unidentified persons while some of those were yet to be arrested. The local police failed to collect evidence of the violence by interacting with eyewitnesses in trouble-prone areas.
With regard to destruction of EVMs, the police presented familiar persons as unknown persons and they also failed to confirm the video clip pertaining to EVM destruction by sending it to the forensic lab even as such video was going viral on social media platforms. The SIT noticed that the concerned VRO and the BLOs lodged a complaint on destruction of EVMs in polling stations very late and the presiding officer also delayed further. Medical reports of the injured persons in the poll-related violence were yet to be collected.
