About 25 kms from Arani Town in Tiruvannamalai district, Tamil Nadu, at Vettaigiripalayam village, the mutilated and rotting bodies of Murugan and Sasikumar, who were killed in the alleged encounter in Andhra Pradesh are kept across the main road in protest.

Members of their families are distraught and are seeking justice, refusing to cremate their loved ones until their deaths are investigated to their satisfaction.

Anticipating trouble, district authorities in Thiruvannamalai have stopped public transport from plying on the roads leading to the village. Shops have shut down. Reserve police forces have been called in and are keeping a vigil.

The mystery of what exactly happened in the forests across the state border in Andhra Pradesh has still not been solved.

20 individuals, including Murugan and Sasikumar, are alleged to have been killed by the Andhra Pradesh police on Tuesday in an alleged encounter while reportedly attempting to smuggle wood out of a forest in Andhra Pradesh.

But the victims’ families and village elders allege that no one from their village cuts wood any more.

We are very poor, there is no water here, no gruel at home. Wherever he gets work, he goes. He is just a painter, he does not know how to cut wood.

-Valliammal, Mother of Murugan.

Activists claim that seven of those killed were forced to step out of a bus across the Andhra border, taken to the forests, tortured, shot dead. They say the crime scene was dressed up to make it look like an encounter.

Shekar, a resident of Gandhi Nagar village near Vettaigiripalayam, is reportedly one of the survivors. He told The Indian Express that he was with one of the victims, Mahendran. He says that the police stopped the bus and picked up Mahendran for ‘questioning’. Shekar maintains that they were headed only for construction work, and not to smuggle any wood.

Meanwhile, Madras High Court came to the aid of the kin by ordering that bodies of six of the woodcutters be preserved in a mortuary in Tiruvanamalai district till the matter is taken up on Friday.