Mumbai: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has approached the special court for custody for custodial interrogation of eight arrested accused by the local police in connection with the May 1, IED blast in Gadchiroli that killed 15 policemen and a civilian. Naxals allegedly carried out the attack.
The NIA took over the investigation into the incident last month and in order to carry out further investigation the agency needs custody of the arrested accused.
During the past few days, the agency produced all the eight accused — Uppuganti Nirmala-kumari (63), Satyanarayana Rani (67), Dilip Hidani (22), Parasaram Tulavi (28), Somsay Madavi (38), Kisan Hidani (42), Sakru Gota (35) and Kailash Ramchandani (34) — before the special court, which remanded them to judicial custody.
The agency on Friday requested the court to grant custody of all accused so that the officers could interrogate them. Following this special judge Vinod Padalkar issued direction to jail authorities to produce the accused before the court on July 26, when the court would hear NIA’s plea.
According to the NIA, they have reasons to believe that said persons were allegedly part of a conspiracy and in order to thoroughly investigate the matter the accused should be remanded to police custody. The probe agency wants to know who else were involved in the conspiracy and the sources of explosives used in the crime.
On May 1, fifteen police personnel and a driver had lost their lives in a landmine blast triggered by the Naxals in Gadchroli. A private vehicle carrying the 15 policemen, who were part of Quick Reaction Team (QRT) and the driver, was enroute from Kurkheda Police Station in Gadchiroli to PS Burada in north Gadchiroli when it was ambushed on its way. After the attack searching and combing operation was carried out in Kurkheda forest area in Gadchiroli.
