Two days after he was killed in an alleged encounter in Adilabad district of Andhra Pradesh,Hemchandra Pandeys family members maintained that he could not have been a Naxalite. On the other hand,the CPI(Maoist),in a statement issued today,said Pandey was a zonal committee member in Uttarakhand,and had joined the former CPI(ML) Peoples War in 2001. Pandey,32,was gunned down in the reported encounter on July 2 along with central committee member Azad Cherukuri Rajkumar. On June 30,when Pandey left his home in New Delhi,he told his wife,Babita,that he was going to Nagpur for a few days. He travelled light just a few clothes,a Hindi journal on economics,and a few other notes. For the next few days,his cellphone remained unavailable. He said he had some work regarding an article. I never used to interfere in his work, said Babita,who met Pandey in college PG College,Pithoragarh where he was two years senior to her. Pandey did his MA in economics from the college. He was very good in economics and was even pursuing his PhD in the subject. He used to read all the time on economics and politics. He was weak in English,but he had started concentrating on that too. He loved movies Page 3,Taare Zameen Par,he watched them all, recalled Babita,who was married to Pandey for the last eight years. She came to know of her husbands death on Saturday,when her brother Vijay Vardhan Upreti,a journalist with ETV Uttarakhand,saw a photograph of the bodies of Pandey and Azad in a Telugu newspaper. I was not sure,but the resemblance was unmistakble. The photograph was of Hem, said Upreti,who chanced upon the newspaper at a function held by the Gandhi Peace Foundation in New Delhi to discuss the way ahead after Azads death. He could not have been a Naxalite. He was active in politics during his student days. In fact,he had twice fought the elections for the post of general secretary of AISA,but lost both times. He was an activist,he was involved in the movement for statehood for Uttarakhand as well as in the Jungle Andolan in Binsar, Upreti added. Pandeys parents were both school teachers. His brother,Rajiv Pandey,is a journalist with a Hindi daily. Pandey too wrote for various Hindi dailies under the pen name Hemant Pandey. He also worked in the corporate communication department of DARCL Logistics Limited,a firm based in Delhi,for a monthly salary of Rs 15,865. He was working on their in-house magazine,Chetna, said Babita. Contrary to his familys statements,the CPI(Maoist) said today that Comrade Hem Pandey of Uttarakhand had joined the then CPI(ML) Peoples War in 2001. He organised peasantry in the mountainous villages in Almora district,taking up umpteen number of issues. Softspoken,bespectacled,lean and energetic,Comrade Hem won the love of people of that region. He was moved into more important works in 2005. He had done his new assignments with patience and endurance, it added. According to the Maoists statement ,the Andhra Police Special Branch arrested Azad and Pandey in Nagpur on June 1,when they had gone to meet a comrade. It said the duo were abducted,and perhaps flown in a helicopter,to Adilabad jungles near Maharashtra border and killed in cold blood. Even if he was a Maoist supporter,why kill him without any evidence, said Babita.
