In the first part of the four part series Nidheesh J Villatt exposed the violence unleashed by the forest officials on traditional forest dwellers, especially Dalits. Here in the second part of the series , he takes a close look at the plight of Adivasis (predominantly Tharus) through the life of Jawahar, an assertive Tharu Adivasi. Jawahar alleges that Adivasis are criminalised to tame dissent

In the first of the four part investigative series on Dudhwa National Park, Nidheesh J Vilatt exposed the violence unleashed by the forest officials on traditional forest dwellers, especially Dalits. Here in the second part of the series , he  takes a close look at the plight of Adivasis (predominantly Tharus) through the life of Jawahar, an assertive TharuAdivasi. Jawahar alleges that Adivasis are criminalised to tame the dissent. Named after first prime minister of the country Jawaharlal Nehru, Dudhwa’s Jawahar is a living example to understand how his namesake’s dream of constitutional democracy is being derailed in India’s hinterlands.

As per forest records, Jawahar is a leading “forest criminal”.

The lower castes are allegedly beaten up, ‘ducked’ in Suheli river and at times have petrol injected into their anus by forest officials. All for not paying Rs 500 per month as a bribe for allowing them to graze their cattle in the park. The torture is laced with caste abuses, with references to BSP supremo and former UP chief minister Mayawati.

Forest officials believe that a Dalit becoming chief minister had made the lower castes in the Dudhwa villages assertive. Infact, attempts by Mayawati to implement Forest Rights Act had enraged the forest bureaucracy.

Nidheesh’s journalistic curiosity led him to spend some time with “criminal Jawahar” in the woods of Dudhwa to understand and ‘track’ his criminal activities. After several sessions, he is convinced that Jawahar’s only “crime” is that he asserts his constitutional rights.

My visit to villages such as Suruma, Bhander Bharari, Kajaria and Suda inside Uttar Pradesh’s Dudhwa National Park, on the Indo-Nepal border convinced me that politics of Forest Rights Act (FRA) is central to the conflict in this region.

While FRA was enacted to undo the “historical injustice”done to the traditional forest dwellers by democratising governance, forest bureaucracy saw it as an assault on their unbridled “privileges”.

“FRA is misused by several elements. People engage in poaching and timber smuggling by misusing FRA,” P.P. Singh, the then deputy director of the Dudhwa National Park told me over telephone.

This colonial myth—Adivasis are smugglers and poachers by default—forms the basic premise of the forest department. Most of the non-governmental organisations (NGO’s) working in environment and eco-tourism sector also propagates this myth.

I was introduced to such a “criminal”, a Tharu Adivasi called Jawahar in Suruma village. His life reflects the root of the conflict here.
 

Living on the edge|Photo: Vijay Pandey
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Named after Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, Jawahar is booked in a number of criminal cases.

“I don’t know how many fake cases are charged against me. Forest department was trying to evict all of us illegally from our ancestral village. I became active in the mobilisation against eviction.”

Tharu Adivasi elders in Jawahar’s village—Suruma—were tricked into sign blank papers during the time of the Emergency (1975-’77) by the forest department to give up claim on their land. They were completely dependent on forests and this forced eviction was then described as political “nasbandhi” (sterilisation) in Adivasi folk songs.

Despite repeated attempts by the government machinery to evict them, Adivasis were staying in the village.

Adivasis recall that they were cheated by several lawyers who had initially appeared for them.

“We had to spend large sums of money to fight legal cases. Whatever little amount we could save from farming went to lawyers. We later understood that many of them were bought by the forest officers,”  a group of Adivasis told me in Jawahar’s village. 

Ramchandhar, former Sarpanch of Suruma village |Photo: Vijay Pandey
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In 2001, this belt was witnessing massive protest and Jawahar was actively involved in it.

With his brilliant organisational skills and ability to express dissent through folk songs (some of them, dark satire on forest governance), Jawahar was becoming a “nuisance” to the jungle lords.
“I was warned several times not to talk loudly. They threatened to lock me up permanently in jail.”

“I was going to Chandan Chowki market near Nepal border one day. I came across forest officials on the way. They were accompanied by some known poachers. The camaraderie between them was too obvious to miss. On seeing me, they blocked my way and warned me to abstain from the struggle to retain our land. On my refusal, they picked me up and took me to the farm house of  Billy Arjan Singh—the hunter turned conservationist. Arjan Singh had encroached common land and we were resisting it.”

Hailing from a princely feudal family, Billy Arjan Singh (1917-2010) is said to have shot his first leopard at the age of 12 and a tiger at the age of 14.
Typical of his class, Singh was very fond of “manly sport of wild life massacres” in his youth. After years of hunting down wild animals, Billy turned conservationist.
“I was a bloodthirsty, a murderous urchin who shot anything that moved… I finally stopped shooting in 1960 when I was overcome with remorse for ending the life of a beautiful leopard in the headlights of my jeep”, Billy had told Sanctuary Asia, a wildlife magazine about his past life.
He is credited to have played a central role in convincing then prime minister Indira Gandhi to establish a National Park in Dudhwa.
Dudhwa was declared a tiger reserve in 1987.
Internationally recognised for initiating several wildlife conservation experiments, he was decorated with national and international honours. This includes Padma Shri, WWF Gold Medal Winner, member of IUCN’s Cat Specialist Group, Paul Getty Wildlife Conservation Award (often considered as the Nobel prize for Conservation).
He was also the honorary wildlife warden of Dudhwa.
His love for animals is legendary. But Adivasis say there are dark shades in his relationship with them and traditional forest dwellers.
Testimonies of several Adivasis claim that Singh was very harsh to them. They say that he was not sensitive enough to acknowledge their role in protecting the natural ecosystem in Dudhwa and always considered them as criminals.
This fact is recorded by Duff Hart Davis, an acclaimed British naturalist and journalist in his obituary about Billy in Independent.
“Another time, in my company, when he found two men stealing firewood, he flattened them, right and left, with swingeing blows that sent them spinning to the jungle floor.”
 

 
“They tortured me by hanging me upside down. I was also brutally beaten up. Hot and cold water were poured on my face in frequent intervals,” Jawahar said. “Billy Arjan Singh was partying with his foreign guests. In between he came to witness my torture and he directed the forest officers to kill me and throw me away in deep forests. I was charged with tiger poaching then. Then followed a slew of fake cases.”

Also Read : Will injecting petrol into anus of Dalits help save Royal Bengal Tiger?

When I asked Jawahar whether he knew his famous namesake, he smiled and said “some officials made fun of my name during torture”.

Interestingly, Adivasis in Bandar Bharai village narrated another incident which corroborated Jawahar’s allegations against Billy.

Ramchandhar Rana, the Tharu Adivasi chieftain of this belt says that in 2002, Billy and senior forest officers came to their village and told them that department is planning to introduce crocodiles in the Mohana river, which forms the boundary between India and Nepal.
 

Ramchandhar Rana, the Tharu Adivasi chieftain of Dudhwa |Photo: Vijay Pandey
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“Billy said they were going to introduce crocodiles in the river to prevent smuggling. But we came to know that it was a shrewd move to prevent fishing. He was very vindictive.”

After the enactment of FRA, Jawahar was trapped again in 2013.

“On a morning, some forest officials came and told me that there is a possibility of good catch of fish in a pond. They said, after FRA, you have legal rights. I went with friends. Then a special team of forest officials came and arrested me.  In the case diary it was stated that I had caught tortoise. The sad part is that forest officials often kill wild animals to fabricate evidence against us.”

I came across several Adivasis who were criminalised similarly.

In some instances, even dead people were framed in wildlife cases. Women and children were also targeted.
 

​Tharu Adivasi children in a school in Suruma. Ramchander says Forest Department is against the functioning of the school |Photo: Vijay Pandey
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In a village called Kanmp Tanda, women narrated how forest officers unleash more violence during festival seasons.

“They need money to celebrate festivals. So they conduct surprise raids. We eat a lot of pork. So they seize this pork ( bought from the market) and accuse us of hunting wild pigs. If we challenge them, they would fabricate evidence and we would land in jail. We are forced to take loans from moneylenders to settle the case. Interestingly, most of these moneylenders are poachers who share good relations with the department. One settlement cost varies from Rs 10,000 to Rs 20,000.”

  Nidheesh J Villatt

  Nidheesh J Villatt reports on political economy, rural affairs and human rights. He tweets @NidheeshJV

The post Find Out Who Is Jawahar, Branded As Criminal By Dudhwa Foresters appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers Act, commonly known as Forest Rights Act (FRA) passed in 2006 sought to “correct historical injustice” meted out to the most marginalised sections.  The law, captured the imagination of social activists world  over as it intended to give land rights and other resources to traditional forest dwellers.

Coming as it did at a time when  almost the entire policies of the government was focused to facilitate the smooth movement of  capital, this legislation along with some others  like Right to Information(RTI), was welcomed with great enthusiasm by those committed to social justice.

The law was intended to make the conservation of forest more transparent without impinging on the rights of the traditional forest dwellers.

Despite its progressive and democracy deepening clauses the FRA was criticised on two fronts.

First by the ‘developmentalists’ who view forest as an area which must be exploited to enhance the GDP. The other, the more sophisticated ones argued that giving rights to traditional forest dwellers would mean felling of trees!

Ten years down, is the FRA working? What are the changes it has brought on the ground?

Our special correspondent Nidheesh J Villat wanted to begin his piece with Dudhwa National Park in Uttar Pradesh. 

What started off as a routine story threw up startling facts. The forest officials are a law unto themselves. They hold sway over the 490 square kms park on the Indo-Nepal border.

Forest officials find the FRA as an affront to their supremacy. They seem to have a finger in every pie. They are accused of conniving with lumber jacks and poachers in plundering the natural resources. The slightest act of assertion by forest dwellers are dealt with intimidation and torture.

All vested interests are aligned against the Scheduled Tribes, Dalits and lower caste Muslims who constitute a majority of traditional dwellers. Those who try to question are often illegally taken into custody, and in some cases subjected to extreme forms of torture.

To divide those fighting for their rights, forest officials have even formed vigilante groups under the garb of protecting forests.  

During his investigations, Nidheesh was told that fake encounters were staged to snuff out resistance from locals. No inquiries are done. The deaths of  the poorest of poor are said to be passed off as ‘unnatural’ deaths.

NaradaNews  exposes the macabre activities of forest officials in the badlands of Lakhimpur Keri that skirt the country’s border with Nepal.  

We hope this report, being published in four parts, will put a spotlight on the barbaric acts in Dudhwa National Park. We believe this would be the first step in ending such savagery.

“After removing our pyjamas they cut the elastic of the underwear with a country knife and threw it away. We were forced to lie down. They filled a veterinary syringe with petrol from the forest department bike. After this they  forcefully parted our legs and injected petrol into our anus. Some  had cotton soaked in petrol pushed it into their anus, ” Tulsi Ram, a frail young man told me.

Sounds barbaric?

“All of us started crying in deep pain. Petrol had started working. Because of pain I thought my stomach would burst. I pleaded for some water. Instead of giving water, they started beating us with a big wooden pole till it broke. We fell unconscious. After some time, some of us regained consciousness. Then officers came and poked us with big laathi and asked us…’you Chamar (a Dalit subcaste) bastards came here to sleep? After Chamar Mayawati came to power you guys are arrogant,” Tulsi recalled.

I was speaking to a group of Dalits and other lower caste traditional forest dwellers in Rampur Bandhiya village in Dudhwa National Park.

I went thereafter hearing about the unconstitutional methods used by the forest department to evict the traditional forest dwellers — Adivasis (predominantly Tharus), Dalits and lower caste Muslims — from the villages situated inside and in the buffer zone of the  National Park.  (See Video)
 

Jungle Raj | Photo: Vijay Pandey
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Braving the morning chill, Tulsi and his friends recalled with horror the day (22 September 2011),  they were picked by a team of forest officers, while they were grazing cattle.

Their crime? They refused to pay the parallel tax–locally known as galla orhafta collected illegally by the forest officers to permit grazing of cattle.

The monthly hafta is Rs 500 here. In some other villages, a family have to pay an yearlygalla consisting of one quintal of rice, 20 kgs of wheat, 25 kgs of mustard and several litres of honey.

“None of us were having money that day. So we couldn’t  pay. We were picked and were beaten throughout the journey from village to Belarayan Forest Range Office. This continued in the ‘torture room’ of the Range Office,” Dorei, an elderly man recalled.
 

I spoke to Steven Miles, professor of medicine and Bioethics at Center for Bioethics, University of Minnesotta, US, about the torture methods of the forest officers in Dudhwa.
Miles is an expert on internal medicine and specialises in medical consequences of the torture. His book, Oath Betrayed:America’s Torture Doctors, “examines military medicine in the War on Terror prisons”.

He says that injecting petrol into the anus or rectum will have serious medical consequences.

“Torture is an impulsive and largely improvised practice. The painful introduction of material or air into the rectum dates at least back to the middle ages. It was used in the ‘War on Terror’ by the US as rectal feeding. Pepper being put in the rectum has been sporadically practiced around the world and the use of other caustic substances including gasoline (petrol) is not surprising,” Miles pointed out.

“Torture techniques are a craft. Rectal and sexual traumas are very common in the torture of men. It would be unusual if rectal gasoline was the only method used. I would not be surprised if brutal and painful rectal rape with a stick or baton or even fluorescent light bulb was done first to open the rectal sphincter. At that point, gasoline (petrol) could be instilled.  Gasoline is enormously and instantly painful on rectal tissue and the inflammation alone could cause rectal fissures and fistula connecting the rectal cavity to the bladder, intestines or freely into the abdomen allowing stool to pass into the abdomen and causing septicemias. The risk of perforations and fistulae would be greatly increased by preceding trauma and rectal tears caused by a baton or from the trauma of a tube inserted into the rectum to administer the gas.

Gasoline is toxic when it gets in the blood, usually by inhaling and occasionally by oral ingestion.  That toxicity includes convulsions, kidney failure, heart failure and shock.  I think it is unlikely that significant gas would be absorbed through the rectal wall,” says Miles.

Suhaeli river is used to torture forest dwellers by ‘ducking’.  | Photo: Vijay Pandey
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When I told him about ‘ducking’ (forcibly immersing the head in the river) of Dudhwa victims, before they were subjected to anal torture, he commented that “all torture are multi-modal”.  Threatening, beating and denial of drinking water would be common in almost all cases of torture, he says.  “15% of the torture victims are subjected to asphyxia” (a condition which is the resultant of the denial of oxygen to the body).

“It is highly probable that victims were tightly bound in a way to stretch or compress ligaments. It may be that when the petrol was inserted, that they were threatened with ignition”, he adds.

Arun Ferreira, noted human rights activist, who was arrested by the Maharashtra police (after branding him as Maoist) details about petrol torture in his prison memoir Colours of the Cage. He says that there was a police officer whose “expertise” was injecting petrol in anus/rectum.
Ghulam Hassan Lone, a Kashmiri Muslim youth was allegedly subjected to similar torture in mid 1990s. He was accused of being a militant who was waging war against India.

Forest office or torture chamber ? | Photo: Vijay Pandey
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“Begar (unpaid forced labour) is common here. After monsoon, forest officers force villagers to clean roads and do other related work. Funds earmarked for such work would be siphoned off by them. The reluctance of some villagers to do begar has made forest officers furious”, village head Yashpal Singh alleged.
 

Victims of fake cases   | Photo: Vijay Pandey
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“This is early 2016. Why is this kind of a brutal torture not yet news?” I asked Singh.

“Journalists from Delhi and Lucknow need wildlife safaris. Local journalists are completely dependent on the economy controlled by forest department,” a rights lawyer who accompanied me pointed out.

Interestingly in another village, a Tharu Adivasi elder gave a vivid picture of  journalism in India’s  hinterlands where class and caste inequalities unfold crudely.

“If we go and collect firewood, which is a constitutional right under FRA, journalists report this as massive wood theft. On a few occasions villagers have blocked vehicles smuggling  huge quantity of timber to Nepal which occur with the connivance of forest officers. But next day’s newspapers would report that the huge logs smuggled as mere waste wood.”
 

Key Facts of Forest Rights Act (FRA) 
Act: Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, popularly known as FRA
Parliament Nod:  2006
Replaced:  Indian Forests Act
Important Features
1. Land Rights
The Act grants people title deeds to forest land that they have been cultivating prior to December 13, 2005.
Those cultivating land but don’t have documentary proof can claim upto 4 hectares, as long as they are cultivating the land themselves for a livelihood.
Those who have a prior title or a government lease, but whose land has been illegally taken by the forest department, or whose land is the subject of a dispute between forest and revenue departments, can claim title to those lands.
The land cannot be sold or transferred to anyone except by inheritance.
2. Use Rights
The law provides for rights to use and/or collect the following
minor forest produce such as tendu leaves, herbs, medicinal plants etc.
3. Grazing areas and water bodies
4. Right to Protect and Conserve forests
5. Right against Arbitrary Relocation

Source : Shankar Gopalakrishnan’s chapter in the upcoming book ” Elgar Handbook on Environmental Law”

Delving into the tale of Dalits who were brutally tortured by injecting petrol into the anus (peeche lagana in local parlance) and accompanying caste abuse hints that forest bureaucracy in the hinterlands are steadfastly following the colonial era of forest governance.

FRA was a direct threat to the clout of the department, veteran trade unionist Ashok Choudhary points out.

“During the last Mayawati government, there were some serious efforts to democratise forest governance by implementing FRA. Forest bureaucracy, eco-tourism mafia and local elites opposed it violently. State violence against Adivasis and Dalits should be seen in this larger context.”

My travel to the interiors of Lakhmipur Kheri gave me an idea about the atrocities of forest department.

“They run a parallel government. They indulge in fake encounters and custodial rape. They also loot natural resources by collaborating with the mafia. They also develop indigenous methods of torture,” a senior IAS officer with several year administrative experience in the district told me.
 

Kinjal Singh IAS, the former collector of Lakhimpur Kheri was transferred to Faizabad district for challenging the powerful forest bureaucracy.
 

Kinjal Singh, the collector of the district till recently, had incurred the wrath of the powerful forest mafia for questioning this parallel system of governance.

Acting on several complaints received from Adivasis and other traditional forest dwellers about the alleged criminal activities happening inside the Dudhwa park as well as in the buffer zone, the young officer ordered surprise checks by police and revenue department.

During some surprise checks she conducted, Kinjal had found massive uprooting of rare species of trees (which fetches huge money in the market) in villages like Pachpeda Richhaya, Kundanpur, Khairigargh (all falling in core area of Dudhwa) as well as in several villages situated in the buffer zone.

During these visits, she also stumbled upon several spots inside the park which were notorious for brewing illicit liquor. All these illegal activities were done in active collaboration of forest officers.
Kinjal also started inquiring about several cases of encounter killings, custodial deaths and sexual assaults  allegedly carried out by the forest bureaucracy.

This made the bureaucracy vindictive and they started a hate campaign against the collector with the active help of local media persons who were allegedly receiving a share of the spoils.

In an unusual development, forest employees in the Dudhwa Tiger reserve had even boycotted work  for several days demanding transfer of Kinjal. The UP government transferred the collector to Faizabad, another district citing huge revenue loss caused by the strike of the forest staff.

“The move by Kinjal to implement FRA made the department furious. Forest officers are a part of mafia associated with timber smuggling and wildlife poaching. Once Adivasis and other traditional forest dwellers enter forest, mafia operations would be affected. So they wanted to ensure that FRA is not implemented,” Rajnish, a trade unionist active in this area, pointed out.

Courtesy: naradanews.com

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