The Tamil Nadu Special Task Force had faked the "encounter killing" of forest brigand Veerappan and his three associates, human rights organisations said.
It said that Veerappan was actually lured into a death trap by a female relative. The Special Task Force of the Tamil Nadu police had claimed that the Veerappan gang was eliminated in an "encounter" near Dharmapuri on the night of October 18.
Representatives of 10 human rights groups said at a press conference here recently that a female relative had fed the Veerappan gang with sedative-laced buttermilk. After they became unconscious, the STF grabbed the four fugitives and shifted them to a police camp across the Cauvery, where they were tortured and killed, the rights activists said.
Releasing a report from a fact-finding team that had eight human rights groups, their spokesman Ramasamy said Veerappan and his associates were in STF custody "at least two days before the so-called encounter on October 18".
The fact-finding team had visited several places in the Veerappan terrain and interviewed the locals and the brigand's relatives, he said.
"The team had found out that the STF caught the unconscious Veerappan and three associates on October 16 and many locals at Gopinatham had seen police jeeps and vans whizzing past that evening, obviously carrying the prize catch. The 'encounter' was faked two days later," Prof Ramasamy said.
He said photographs of Veerappan and associates showed wound marks that indicated they were tortured and the encounter was "stage-managed".
The panel would submit reports to the governments of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, besides moving the courts with public interest litigations seeking the truth about Veerappan's death.
Also, a sitting high court judge should probe the "fake encounter", Prof Ramasamy said.
The widow of Veerappan, Muthulakshmi, who was also present at the press conference, alleged that the STF was harassing her and her two daughters because she was demanding that a second post-mortem be done on Veerappan's body. She had opposed the STF plan to cremate the body and insisted on it being buried, so that it could be exhumed late for another postmortem.