It has taken over a decade for the exoneration of tribal activist Soni Sori. She has finally been acquitted of all the cases lodged against her under Chhattisgarh’s previous Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) regime.
“Can they return the 12 years back to me?” asked the 47-year-old tribal rights activist after a special court in Dantewada acquitted her in a sedition case filed against her in 2011. Soni Sori was arrested from Delhi in 2011 and was accused along with three others “including an Essar company official, who were accused of supplying money to Maoists,” reported IE. Special judge Vinod Kumar Dewangan found Sori, her aide Lingaram Kodopi, a contractor BK Lala and Essar official DVCS Varma not guilty in an FIR filed by the Dantewada police in September 2011 stated the report, adding that the Police had alleged that the accused Lala had paid Rs 15 lakhs to Sori and Kodopi to pay Maoists for the Essar company. The case was transferred from a special NIA court in Jagdalpur to a special court in Dantewada on January 28.
According to the IE “the court found that the prosecution couldn’t prove the case against Sori and the others.” The court put on record that several witnesses of the prosecution have given contradictory statements and that the “prosecution has not been able to prove the charges against the accused beyond any objectionable doubt. Now after the exoneration in this case, Sori has been “acquitted of all the cases” lodged against her under the previous BJP regime, reported IE.
However, Soni, who hails from Dantewada, has been raising issues of atrocities against tribals in Bastar by both security forces and the Maoists. Recently Chhattisgarh’s Koya Adivasis in Basti lost 16-year-old Sanum Punem, when army personnel in the area allegedly killed him during what they insisted was an anti-Naxal operation on March 11, 2022. Adivasi leader Soni Sori, nowadays at Gangalur village where the incident occurred, appealed to the people of India to rage against this incident. Sori, in a video message, said, “All I want to ask India is this – how will we save these children? [gestures at the two boys and then the missile] The police launched these [missiles] at our children. I want to ask you to please save Bastar children. Then the police say these are Naxal. Naxals say this belongs to the police. So to whom do these [missiles] belong?”