Annual Report 2013-14 have found. And, even if it was assumed that, because of the hot weather, it was the local custom for men to walk around in their underwear, there was no reason why one of the men, after an encounter, should have been found without any clothes at all. 4.104 The Commission also noted that the inquest did not record that the clothes were wet, though some were blood-stained. That point was important because the Assam Rifles had reported that there was “incessant rain” when the encounter took place. The villagers saw the bodies on the roadside outside the house the next morning. If they had been killed in the fields, therefore, the bodies had not been brought in. The clothes should therefore have been both wet and muddy. Since the inquest did not record any such finding, the bodies could not have been recovered from the fields. The Commission observed that the claim made by the two officers of the Assam Rifles that these men escaped into the fields, where they were killed in an encounter in “zero visibility night conditions” and in heavy rain, could not, therefore, be accepted. 4.105 The Commission further observed that their account was further undermined because they had also reported that the alleged militants took cover in dense foliage. If those were fields adjoining village homes, there would have been standing crops, since by late April the winter crop would have been in full growth. It was extremely implausible that in that kind of terrain, in the midst of lush vegetation, and in an encounter that allegedly took place in heavy rain, which would have turned the ground into mud, the Assam Rifles could have recovered 21 spent cartridges, apart from even larger quantities of live ammunition. 4.106 The Superintendent of Police reported that the police conducted none of the tests that were standard in a thorough criminal investigation. No tests were conducted in a forensic laboratory to confirm that: i) the pistols were in working order and had been fired; ii) the spent cartridges had been fired from these pistols; iii) fingerprints on the pistols matched those of the dead men, proving that they had handled them; and iv) tests for gunshot residue on their fingers established that they had fired weapons. 4.107 The Commission held that in the absence of any of those tests, there was no proof that any of those five men had either had handled or fired the weapons allegedly recovered from the scene of the occurrence. 4.108 Rejecting the report of the Assam Rifles, the Commission observed that the Magistrate who conducted the enquiry had held that four out of the five men might have had involvement with an extremist organization, he had not examined the circumstances of their deaths. Even if those men had extremist links, it was difficult to accept the claim that the men were killed in a genuine encounter after examination of the reports, sent by the Assam Rifles and by the police. 4.109 The Commission therefore issued a notice to the Ministry of Home Affairs to show cause as to why it should not recommend relief for the next of kin of Prabhat Basumatary, 46 | NHRC