Amnesty International on Thursday called for a detailed investigation into how police shot and killed three Indian farmers during a protest over the construction of a new water pipeline.
The global rights body said the inquiry, ordered by the state government of Maharashtra in western India, should be “thorough and fair” amid claims that armed police deliberately shot unarmed protesters as they fled.
“The government must investigate how it is that police opened fire with live ammunition on people throwing stones,” the group’s Asia-Pacific director, Sam Zarifi, said in a statement. “Using firearms in a lethal manner should be the absolute last resort and it is not clear at all that the police properly relied on other options.”
Footage of the disturbances aired on Indian television news channels on Thursday appeared to show two officers let off rounds from revolvers at demonstrators running away across fields while another fired a rifle. The protest, over long-running plans to acquire agricultural land for the pipeline, happened between the popular hill station resort of Lonavala and the city of Pune, some 100 kilometres (60 miles) from Mumbai.
The shootings, which police say were in self-defence after tear gas and rubber bullets failed to disperse the crowd, caused uproar in India’s parliament on Wednesday, forcing the session to be adjourned. Opposition lawmakers in the Maharashtra assembly called the government “murderers” and also brought proceedings to a halt.