Slain Maoist Kishenji's funeral turns propaganda platform

The Maoists launched an aggressive campaign against the Centre and state governments at Kishenji's funeral on Sunday.

As the top Maoist leader was cremated at his native village of Peddapalli in Andhra Pradesh, the rebels called for a two-day strike all over the country on December 4 and 5, and in the Telangana region on December 1 and 2 in protest against the killing.

Turning the occasion into a propaganda platform, CPI (Maoist) central committee spokesman Abhay, believed to be Kishenji's younger brother Mallojula Venugopal, sent a condolence message to the village, which was read out by Maoist ideologue P. Varavara Rao. The Naxalites vowed to take revenge on the security forces "who had killed Kishenji in cold blood" and called upon the people to observe a "protest week" from November 29.

Admitting that his death was a big blow to the movement, Abhay accused Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, Home Minister P. Chidambaram and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee of hatching a conspiracy to kill Kishenji. He said the Bengal government had betrayed the people by killing the Maoist leader.

Slain Maoist leader Kishenji

Kishenji's nephew Satish lit the funeral pyre, amid chants of "Comrade Kishenji amar rahe" by Maoist sympathisers. Overground Maoist activists, sympathisers, activists of people's organisations and civil liberties committees, political leaders and locals from surrounding villages turned up to pay tribute to Kishenji.

Local Congress MP G. Vivek and Telangana Rashtra Samithi MLAs Etela Rajender and Koppula Eeshwar, MLC N. Laxman Rao and a number of local Congress and TRS leaders were among those who paid tributes to Kishenji, who was associated with the statehood movement in the early Seventies.

Revolutionary balladeer Gaddar and his followers sang songs eulogising Kishenji at the funeral. The Maoist leader was killed in an encounter with security forces on Thursday.

"Kishenji's death was a political murder in the name of Operation Green Hunt. But it will not demoralise the Maoist movement, which will continue," Varavara Rao said, demanding the officers involved in the encounter be booked for murder.

The autopsy report has found that Kishenji was shot six times and received two splinter wounds during the encounter. The bullets hit him in the chin, head and chest among other parts of the body, doctors said.

One of the shots appeared to have been fired from a range of around 500 m, they added.

Forensic experts also found some gunpowder on his hands, indicating that he was using firearms to defend himself.

Kishenji's body, which was flown from Kolkata to Hyderabad on Saturday night, was shifted to Peddapalli, about 200 km from Hyderabad, by the police early on Sunday.

A large number of Maoist sympathisers including Gaddar and Ganti Prasadam, secretary of Amara Veerula Bandhu Mitrula Sangham (Martyrs' Relatives and Friends Committee) had gathered at the airport to receive the body. But the police took the coffin out from the cargo gate and put it in an ambulance bound for his village.

The Karimnagar police also prevented Maoist supporters and locals from putting up the body at the local government junior college grounds.