Maoist | SabrangIndia

Cops didn’t intervene to save Simdega lynching victim: Widow

Thu, 06 Jan 2022 12:45:32 +0000

Image Courtesy:english.newstracklive.com

In yet another horrific example of mob violence, Sanju Pradhan, a native of Besrajara village in Jharkhand’s Simdega district was dragged out of his home on Tuesday, and beaten up on allegations of tree felling allegedly by nearly 200 people from the neighbouring Bambalkhera village. The mob then set his body on fire. His widow has now claimed that the police just stood there and watched and did nothing to save her husband’s life.

This is interesting because according a report in the Indian Express, Kolebira Police Station Officer In-charge Rameshwar Bhagat had claimed that they could not save the man as they could reach the spot only after the lynching. But Sapna Devi, the widow of the 34-year-old man, told the publication on Wednesday, “Police were there even before the assault [on Pradhan] started. I pleaded, begged them to save my husband. But no one came [forward to help].” Pradhan had reportedly skipped a meeting about felling of trees in a part of the forest that is considered sacred by the local tribal community. But Sapna Devi says, “We had bought some trees from a person and we had cut the wood for our home.” Meanwhile, the publication quoted an unnamed official as saying, “It is not that the police did not want to do anything, but they could not do anything because the mob was completely violent.”

Shortly after the incident, reports emerged that Pradhan was allegedly associated with Maoists, and had cases lodged against him in the local thana. The Telegraph also reported how local police say that he would allegedly threaten people about the felling and sale of Sal trees. It remains to be established if any of these allegations are true or just another example of blaming the victim and justifying the lynching. Simdega superintendent of police Shamz Tabrez told TT, “He had links with Maoist groups but that does not give villagers the licence to take law into their own hands. We will nab all persons involved in the incident soon.”

Village head Suvan Budho is among the 15 people named in the FIR that was registered in response to a complaint filed by Sapna Devi. 200 unnamed people have also been charged in the FIR.

Jharkhand has had its share of lynchings in the past as well, the most shocking being the Latehar lynchings that took place on March 18, 2016, when 32-year-old cattle trader Mazloom Ansari and his business partner’s 11-year-old son Imtiaz Khan were mercilessly beaten and hanged from a tree by cow vigilantes in Jhabar village.

Recently, in Simdega itself, there was another such incident where a mob beat up a young man. On November 28, the Muslim man identified as Md. Adil, said to be mentally challenged and 22-years-old, was brutally beaten up, when he wandered into a neighbouring village in the Idgah Mohalla in Simdega, by mistake. The attackers allegedly threw his cap on the ground and pulled his beard. Adil was then beaten and could barely talk as he recalled that a group of men had attacked him in the area known as Thakur Toli.

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Deccan Herald caught in sly attempt to malign Fr. Stan Swamy

Thu, 15 Jul 2021 13:26:48 +0000

Readers of Deccan Herald, a prominent Begaluru-based English Language news paper, were shocked on Thursday morning when they discovered a quiz, purportedly a part of a consumer outreach program by the publication, suggest that Fr. Stan Swamy was linked to a banned Maoist group.

The quiz, a picture of which may be viewed below asks readers to identify a person who recently passed away, based on a series of images:

1) the Bhima Koregaon Pillar,

2) advocate and union leader Sudha Bharadwaj,

3) a white hammer and sickle against a red background (a logo of the banned group CPI-Maoist).

This weaves in with the narrative spun by the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) who claim that Fr. Stan Swamy was associated with CPI – Maoist, a banner left wing terror group. Truth is Fr. Stan was an activist for Adivasi rights and had campaigned against their mass incarceration. The quiz and its choice of images, therefore, are not only in poor taste, but also defamatory, given how no charges against Fr. Stan have been proven so far. It is also dangerous because it can sway public pinion against Fr. Stan by subtly creating a connection in people’s minds between him and Maoists.

Enraged activists and citizens groups have now written to the Editor of Deccan Herald saying, “We would like to draw your attention to the State page (Page 5) of E-Paper/Newspaper, released on July 15, 2021. The DH Visual Connect ad on the page is not just factually incorrect, but it is also in very bad taste. Advertising and holding contests, based on false information is not only indicative of the creator’s prejudice, but also of bad journalism.” The letter further says, “How did the editorial staff not see the absurdities inherent in this advertisement? This oversight, if done inadvertently, is indicative of unprofessionalism, and if done deliberately smacks of malicious bias.”

Drawing further attention to exactly why the quiz is disrespectful, the letter says, “We are dismayed at the concept of making a game of a person’s death. It is a shame that a newspaper of repute had to resort to making a prize-winning puzzle about a human rights activist, whose was incarcerated and abused by a system that is being globally condemned for being draconian. To mock the dead or abuse the living, is not the sign of a civilized person or publication. The clues used are even more shameful. It was a deliberate attempt to vilify Bhima Koregaon, human rights activist Sudha Bhardwaj, and the Communists!!!”

It asks, “What exactly was DH trying to achieve by running the advertisement on a day prior to the hearing of the case? Does it want it’s readers to develop a bias against the victims of a flawed and draconian state policy?” The activists also clarify, “Father Stan was not a communist, nor is Advocate Sudha Bhardwaj. Bhima Koregaon, the place and monument, is also not connected with the communist movements.”

More pointedly, the letter questions the timing of the quiz and says that it “indicates mal-inten,” adding, “At a point of time when Sudha Bhardwaj’s case is being decided by the courts, this would add credence to the false narrative around her. This is going to sublimely influence the readers, jury and others connected with the case that there is a connection between all four.”

The signatories to the open letter are growing with each passing minute and they all stand resolute and united in their demand, asking Deccan Herald to “withdraw this false and malicious content immediately, and issue an apology for the same.” Further, they say, “We would like the apology to be published in the same space in tomorrow’s July 16’s newspaper in all editions,” warning, “In case there is no apology and withdrawal, we will be left with no option but take the matter to court.”

Activist Vimla KS also sent a strong message to DH and got this response from the publication: “This was done by a quiz agency, for quiz purpose (sic). We were not directly involved. However, we may issue a clarification.”

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No Maoist links, NIA trying to smear anti-CAA agitation: KMSS

Thu, 04 Jun 2020 14:23:06 +0000

Image Courtesy: nenow.in

On Wednesday, Assam-based peasant rights organization Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS) condemned the National Investigation Agency’s (NIA) effort to allegedly establish that KMSS leaders and the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protests were guided by a Maoist ideology, The Telegraph reported.

KMSS leaders Akhil Gogoi, Dhaijya Konwar, Manash Konwar and Bitu Sonowal are currently in jail. Out of them, Akhil Gogoi, Dhaikya Konwar and Bitu Sonowal have been in jail since December 16 and have been charged under the Unlawful Activities and Prevention Act (UAPA), 1967. Gogoi has also been booked for charges of criminal conspiracy and promoting enmity between different groups of people. All of the leaders have faced continuous incarceration with new cases being slapped against them despite them acquiring bail.

KMSS Joint General Secretary Mukut Deka spoke about the 40-page chargesheet filed by the NIA which was not made public, saying it had “loopholes” and that the agency was somehow trying to brand KMSS members even when they had no basis.

Deka told The Telegraph, “We just have one thing to say: leading a democratic mass movement does not make one a Maoist. Reading books on Maoism does not make one a Maoist. The anti-CAA movement is a people’s movement. People are protesting because they fear about their identity and culture. NIA is saying KMSS leaders have a role in the violence during the anti-CAA protests and that it resembled like a Maoist attack. But we want to say we don’t believe in violence.”

He added that the NIA had seized books from the KMSS Chandmari office like The Communist Manifesto and Socialism: A Very Short Introduction, but that or using the words lal salaam and comrades didn’t mean that they subscribed to the Communist ideology.

KMSS leader Bhasco De Saikia held a press conference alleging that the out of the 40 pages of the chargesheet, only 19 pages mentioned the charges against Gogoi, with the rest being annexures, the News Mill reported. He also alleged that the two statements by anonymous witnesses used to prove the charge that Gogoi may have maintained links with Maoists, may have been done by coercing or bribing them. He told The News Mill, “The entire case is based on two anonymous state witnesses. There is no concrete evidence to prove any of the charges. Copies of 64 FIRs against them have been enclosed in the chargesheet in lieu of evidence.”

On May 14, the NIA had summoned journalist Manash Jyoti Baruah to question him regarding the violence during the anti-CAA protests in Assam and Gogoi’s alleged role in it, FirstPost reported. In the same manner, earlier last month, RTI activist and Swaraj Asom convener Bhaben Handique was also called by the NIA for the same reason, The Telegraph reported. Though Handique had left KMSS owing to an internal clash, he had maintained good terms with the leaders and said that he was being targeted due to his anti-CAA stand.

Both Deka and Saikia have said that the allegation of KMSS leaders having Maoist links was a disrespect to the emotions of the Assamese who have been leading the anti-CAA movement and said that if the leaders aren’t released immediately, the KMSS will start an agitation to ensure their release.

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53 Maoist Attacks, 107 Dead In 2019; Yet, Numbers Lower Than During UPA

Fri, 03 May 2019 07:03:55 +0000

New Delhi: The May 1, 2019, improvised explosive device (IED) blast triggered by Maoists in Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli district was the 53rd incident of Maoist-related violence across the country this year, according to data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP).

At least 107 persons have been killed in left-wing extremism (LWE)-linked violence across the country so far in 2019, including in Gadchiroli, where the largest attack in recent years resulted in the deaths of 15 members of a police quick response team (QRT) and a driver travelling in a private vehicle.

Over the five years to April 2019, there have been 942 Naxal/Maoist attacks.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has claimed that no major bomb blasts have taken place during the tenure of his National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, but SATP data show 942 Naxal attacks in India between January 1, 2014, and April 11, 2019, as FactChecker reported on April 15, 2019. These attacks have left 451 people dead and 1,589 injured.

Nevertheless, these numbers are lower than during the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, as IndiaSpend reported on April 27, 2019. There were 1,415 LWE-linked violent incidents in 2013; 1,136 in 2012; 1,760 in 2011 and 2,213 in 2010.

The 2010 figure was the highest ever recorded since the formation of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) on September 21, 2004, according to SATP.

Under the current NDA government, there were 833 LWE-linked incidents in 2018; 908 in 2017; 1,048 in 2016; and 1,089 in 2015, as per data submitted in parliament by the central home affairs ministry in December 2018.

The security forces achieved a better ‘kill ratio’–the number of personnel killed as against the number of Naxalites killed–in 2018 (more than three Naxalites killed for each security personnel death) than in 2017 (fewer than two Naxalites for one security personnel), as per home ministry data submitted in parliament in February 2019.

On October 7, 2018, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh had said left-wing extremism would be eliminated within 2-3 years. In 2015, the government had launched a ‘National Policy and Action Plan’ for the security and development of Naxal/Maoist-affected areas and their populations, and for improving security forces’ training and equipment.

The NDA government had claimed that squeezing the funding for Naxal and other terrorist groups was one of the main motivations for demonetisation in November 2016. Union Minister for Law and Justice as well as Electronics and Information Technology, Ravi Shankar Prasad, had tweeted that demonetisation had “broken the back of terrorists and Naxalites”.

Singh’s predecessor, former home minister P. Chidambaram, had similarly claimed in 2010 that left-wing extremism would be crushed within three years.

Yet, under successive governments over 20 years to 2017, Naxal/Maoist violence claimed more than 12,000 lives, including of 2,700 security forces personnel, Business Standard reported on July 9, 2017.

Naxalites/Maoists control pockets in 68 districts in 10 states, though nearly 90% of their activity is limited to 35 districts, as per the home ministry.

(Sharma is an intern with IndiaSpend.)

Courtesy: India Spend

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Blast at polling booth in Gadchiroli where voting was underway

Thu, 11 Apr 2019 10:38:08 +0000

An improvised explosive device (IED) blast was triggered near a polling booth in Maharashtra’s Maoist-affected Gadchiroli district on Thursday. No one was injured in the incident. This is the second such blast triggered by Maoists in Gadchiroli in two days.

Mumbai: An improvised explosive device (IED) blast was triggered near a polling booth in Maharashtra’s Maoist-affected Gadchiroli district on Thursday. No one was injured in the incident, reports said.

Maharashtra Police reported a landmine blast near the polling centre. Voting was underway at this polling booth when the landmine exploded.

The IED blast took place around 10:30 am in Waghezari area, around 150 metres from the polling booth where people were standing in queues to cast their votes for the Lok Sabha election, an official told news agency PTI.

This is the second such blast triggered by Maoists in Gadchiroli in two days.

On Wednesday, Maoists had set off an IED at Gatta Jambia village in Etapalli tehsil of the district when a polling party was moving towards polling stations under the protection of a police party and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel.

A CRPF trooper was injured in the incident. The sub-officer suffered limb injury due to the improvised explosive device blast. He is stated to be in critical condition and is being airlifted for treatment, an official said.

The official said Maoists were trying to disrupt the poll process and create panic among villagers, who came out in large numbers to vote on Thursday.

Gadchiroli is among the seven seats where polling is underway during the first phase of Lok Sabha elections in Maharashtra.

The left-wing extremists in the Maoist-affected Gadchiroli-Chimur constituency had reportedly asked the tribals in the area to vote for anti-BJP candidates in their strongholds. This is the largest constituency in the state measuring up to 17,415 sq km, with an electorate of 15.69 lakh, stated a report. Usually, the Maoists boycott the elections in total.

However, this time they decided to ask the Gadchiroli tribals to cast votes against the BJP and its allies in the ‘Mahayuti.’ The decision was taken after a number of meetings was held in the interiors.

“Maoists never support any candidate but they have told villagers to shun BJP as a party,” a source was quoted by Times of India as saying.

So far, the Maoists have attempted to sabotage the polling in various places including Gadchiroli, Gondia, and neighbouring Chhattisgarh.

Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Bhima Mandavi and five others were killed in a Maoist-triggered IED blast in Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada district on Tuesday.

In Chhattisgarh on Thursday, Naxals detonated an IED in Narayanpur district, which comes under Bastar constituency. No casualty was reported in the blast. Bastar is also voting in the first phase of Lok Sabha elections.

With inputs from agencies.

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Chhattisgarh: Talks, Not Bullets as Solution

Mon, 24 Dec 2018 05:14:55 +0000

The new Chief Minister’s assurance of looking at the socio-economic roots of Maoist insurgency, is a welcome change in tone and content.

It’s not often that we hear now a days about Maoists being referred to as human beings with a cause, since most often they are caricatured or vilified. It is true that opprobrium earned by the Maoists is often deserved. But it is equally true that official sanctioned propaganda ends up demonising them, virtually turning them into non-persons, therefore, legitimate targets of abuse, arrest or annihilation. It is, therefore, striking that the new Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh, Bhupesh Baghel, in an interview to the Times of India said, among other things, that if the CPI(Maoist)-led insurgency “was to be solved by blazing guns, it would have been solved during Raman Singh’s 15 year rule”. These 15 years witnessed Salwa Judum, Operation Greenhunt, intimidation of journalists, lawyers, social activists, civil liberties activists and even “extermination” of communists (a former general secretary of the Communist Party of India used this term in his letter in 2009 to then Prime Minister) by the police department in Bastar.

The new Chief Minister went on to say that “a policy of bullet-for-bullet has failed miserably and it is time to give a new thought to the issue”. He added that it was wrong to assume that deployment of more forces, intensifying encounters, and counting of bodies” were marks of “success”. And insisted that as CM he did not want to “count bodies” but wanted a dialogue with the people of Bastar, tribals, intellectuals, local bussinessmen, rights activists and even forces deployed, as all were “affected”. Terming that the insurgency has socio-economic roots that need to be addressed, Baghel went on to assure people that as part of Congress party’s electoral promise, 2,044 hectare area of land acquired for the Tata Steel plant in June 2005 would be returned to the adivasi peasantry since the Tatas last year cancelled the project.
It is true that a new government, on taking over power, is known to strike a different chord. Also, Congress has been known to ‘run with the hare and hunt with the hound’. Indeed, while the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) may have ruled Chhattisgarh for 15 years, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance ruled in New Delhi for 10 years, and their policy was no different than BJP’s. So, until one sees progress or a new course on the ground, the new tone struck by Baghel could just be propaganda.

Baghel reminded the interviewer that Congress party “lost its frontline leaders in a deadly Naxal attack” in May 2013. So, it’s not as if there’s much sympathy for the Maoists in the Chhattisgarh Congress party. However, even as verbiage, there’s something markedly different and it does suggest that there is room for making amends in the government’s military approach, which alone was visible in the past five years. So much so, that for the first time in past five years, instead of setting a new deadline (as it kept shifting it to a future date) for “wiping out” Maoists from Bastar, was replaced with the new CM pitching for talks with the rebels.

Whether or not the talks take place is a different matter, but sometimes a shift in the language employed opens up possibilities for renewal of activities lying dormant. That is, lawyers, journalists, activists driven away by the Bastar police and their local allies through a concerted campaign of threat and attack, can return. Were this to happen, then it will signal a change for the better.

Meanwhile, it is worth knowing that 15 years of BJP rule and military suppression weakened the Maoist movement but could not wipe them out, as desired by BJP. The statistics of killings, arrests and surrenders have all been exposed as exaggerated, if not fake, news. With deployment of security forces going up and the Maoist ranks depleted, going by the official propaganda, they ought to have become an inconsequential force. Apparently, that is not the case, because none other than Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh said that Maoists would be wiped out in “one, two or three years”. Since Mission 2016 or the earlier deadline for decimating Maoists announced under UPA rule were a miserable failure, one can only hope that Baghel’s reminder to look at the socio-economic roots of Maoist insurgency is a welcome change in tone and content, because the “root cause” under BJP’s rule had become a phrase of derision. So, its return is most welcome.

Courtesy: Newsclick.in

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Lawyer and Activists Arun Ferreira, Vernon Gonsalves taken into custody after Pune court rejects bail plea

Fri, 26 Oct 2018 13:15:14 +0000

Earlier on Friday, a Pune Sessions court rejected their plea seeking an extension of their house arrests for seven days.

The Pune Police on Friday took into custody activists Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira hours after a Pune Sessions court rejected their bail pleas and applications seeking an extension of their house arrests for seven days. The period of their house arrests, as ruled by the Supreme Court, ended on Friday.

The review petition filed by RomilaThapar and others was heard today and the Order is still being awaited.

Gonsalves is being taken to MIDC police station in Mumbai’s Andheri and later will be taken to Pune.

Ferreira and Gonsalves, along with activists Sudha Bharadwaj, Varavara Rao and Gautam Navlakha, were arrested on August 28 in connection with their alleged involvement in an event that preceded the violence at BhimaKoregaon near Pune on January 1. On Thursday, a Hyderabad court had extended the house arrest of Varavara Rao. The Delhi High Court had ordered Navlakha’s release from house arrest on October 1.

The Supreme Court had last month extended the house arrest of all five activists by four weeks. Five other activists – ShomaSen, Surendra Gadling, Mahesh Raut, Rona Wilson and Sudhir Dhawale – were arrested in June as part of the same investigation. They are also accused of having links to the outlawed Communist Party of India (Maoist).

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A new way to target activists in Chhattisgarh: Charge them with exchanging old notes for Maoists

Thu, 29 Dec 2016 07:45:45 +0000

Seven activists from Telangana have been arrested by Bastar police. A complaint has been filed against lawyer Shalini Gera.

On December 25, seven members of the Hyderabad-based civil rights body, Telangana Democratic Front, were arrested by Chhattisgarh police. The group included three lawyers, an independent journalist and three research scholars from Osmania University. The police charged them with assisting the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) and claimed to have recovered demonetised currency notes worth Rs 100,000 from them.

The Telangana Democratic Front has denied the charges. The seven men were part of a fact-finding team that was on its way to Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur district to investigate the alleged encounter of a hearing impaired teenager, said N Narayana Rao, general secretary of the Civil Liberties Committee, which is part of the Telangana Democratic Front. The team was not carrying such a large amount of currency, he said, and the police has framed them to prevent them from reaching Bijapur.

Two days later, Shalini Gera, another lawyer who travelled to Bijapur to investigate the same encounter killing, was informed by the Bastar superintendent of police that a complaint had been filed against her. The complainant accused her of exchanging old Rs 1,000 notes worth Rs 10 lakh for the Maoists.

Gera described the accusations as “a continuation of the harassment” faced by human rights activists in the region.

The encounter killing

On December 16, Bijapur police announced that a team of security forces had killed an “unidentified and armed Maoist in uniform” in the jungles of Metapal in Gangalur thana after a “fierce gun battle”. The residents of Metapal recognised the teenager as 13-year-old Somaru Pottam and carried the body to Gangalur police station, demanding an enquiry.

Receiving no response from the police, the parents of the teenager petitioned the Chhattisgarh High Court in Bilaspur. In the petition, Pottam’s parents said that the teenager was returning to Metapal on the morning of December 16 with another boy. While they stopped to gather forest produce that is considered to have medicinal properties, the security forces ambushed them. Pottam’s companion managed to escape but Pottam, who is hard of hearing and suffers from skin ailments on his lower body, could not run fast enough. He was captured.

The petition alleged that Pottam had been interrogated for an hour. Being hard of hearing, he could not answer many questions. In full view of the villagers, three security personnel shot the teenager from a distance of less than five feet, killing him instantly, the petition said. Pottam was then dressed in a Maoist uniform and a 12-bore gun was placed next to the body.

The parents decided to bury the body of their child, instead of following their custom of cremation, so that the evidence could be preserved. On December 23, the Chhattisgarh High Court in Bilaspur ordered the exhumation of Pottam’s body for another postmortem, which was done on December 26.

Activists working in the area claim that this rattled the security forces.

Arrests and intimidation

On December 25, a day ahead of the court-ordered postmortem, the seven-member team of the Telangana Democratic Front was on its way to Bijapur from Hyderabad. Narayana Rao said he received a call from one of the team members, 48-year-old Prabhakar Rao, a lawyer in Hyderabad High Court. Prabhakar Rao told him that the Telangana police had arrested them in Dummugudem village in the state’s Khamman district around 9.30 am, and handed them over to Chhattisgarh Police in the Konta area of Sukma district by 7 pm.

“We think they wanted to show the arrest in a state which has a Public Security Act,” said Rao.

The seven men were booked under the Chhattisgarh State Special Public Security Act, which vests law enforcement agencies with draconian powers. The activists have been charged under sections 8(1), 8(2), 8(3) and 8(5) of the Act for allegedly assisting the Maoists. The police has claimed they possessed banned currency notes worth Rs. 100,000 and Maoist literature.

Rao dismissed the charges. “It is normal for people to carry some amount of cash while travelling,” he said. “It was certainly not a heavy amount. It was obviously not a lakh of rupees.”

He also questioned the police’s move to arrest anyone on the basis of possession of old notes. “Why is it wrong to carry currency notes? After all, the government said old notes can be exchanged till December 30,” he said.

In a statement on December 27, the Chhattisgarh police claimed that the activists had been arrested from Dharmapenta village in Sukma district and not in Telangana. The police alleged the activists were members of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) and assisted the organisation financially. The seven men were presented before a court in Sukma, which sent them to judicial custody. “We are opposing their bail application,” said Jitendra Shukla, additional superintendent of police, Sukma.

Lawyers from Hyderabad have reached Dantewada to take legal action to secure the quick release of the seven activists.

Another complaint

A day after the Telangana activists were arrested, less than 200 kilometres away in Bastar’s commercial capital Jagdalpur, about a dozen police personnel stormed a community hall named Goel Dharamshala. They demanded to search a room which had been occupied by three members of a legal team – Shalini Gera, Rishit Neogi and Nikita Agarwal. Gera was representing Pottam’s parents in the High Court, and the team had just returned from Bijapur where his body had been exhumed for a repeat postmortem. Since the police did not have search warrants, the lawyers refused to comply.
Later, in an undated letter to the Superintendent of Police, Bastar, a complainant Vinod Pandey alleged that one of the lawyers, Shalini Gera, had exchanged old Rs 1,000 notes worth Rs 10 lakh for the Maoists that day in Goel Dharamshala.

Gera is a founding member of the Jagdalpur Legal Aid group that arrived in conflict-ridden Bastar in 2013. Since then, the group has provided legal representation to several Adivasis free of charge. In February this year, Gera and her colleague Isha Khandelwal were forced to exit Bastar after sustained intimidation by civil vigilante groups.

“I fear that this is a continuation of the harassment already faced by us, and other human rights workers, academics, lawyers, writers, tribal rights activists in the Bastar Division,” said Gera in a December 27 letter to the National Human Rights Commission.

In an email, she also pointed out that the arrangements for the legal team’s stay had been made by the Divisional Commissioner of Bastar. The team had travelled to Metapal village with Pottam’s parents and government officials. “The complaint against me is a rather imaginative one,” she said, “but considering that I had spent the entire Sunday in the company of officials from Bijapur – the SDM [sub-divisional magistrate], Dy Collector [Deputy Collector] and the Tehsildar of Bijapur, it is altogether impossible to imagine how I could have found time to sprint across to the jungles of Dantewada to meet topnotch Naxalites to take their demonetised currency notes for exchanging.”

History of intimidation

Somaru Pottam’s case is one of the many cases of alleged police excesses in Bijapur that have come to light in the past few months. The district had emerged as a flashpoint in the conflict between armed guerrillas, commonly known as Maoists, and security forces in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar region. Ordinary Adivasis, who are viewed with suspicion by both the security forces as well as the Maoists, have borne the brunt of the violence.

Road connectivity in the district is poor and many villages are nestled inside the forests, making it tough to investigate human rights violations. Even when villagers make the arduous journey to the district headquarters to lodge a police complaint, they are often dismissed. In September, two young Adivasi human rights activists from the region were reportedly harassed by the police for filing cases alleging the security forces had killed innocent people.

In December 2015, the Bastar police declared they wanted to rid the region of Maoists and announced Mission 2016. Since then, four journalists have been arrested and two others, including Scroll.in contributor Malini Subramaniam, have been harassed and forced to relocate from the region. Activist-scholars Bela Bhatia, Nandini Sundar and others have been threatened and cases have been slapped against them by Chhattisgarh police.

“Bastar is proving to be an island of anarchy in the heart of democratic India,” said Rao of the Telangana Democratic Front. “The situation is more dire than we can imagine.”

Courtesy: Scroll.in

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Shooting to Kill: In LDF-ruled Kerala, Two Gruesome Encounter Killings

Mon, 28 Nov 2016 12:37:57 +0000

Recently the brutal attack on eight undertrials outside the Bhopal Central jail had generated national outrage. Will these killings in Kerala, at the moment under the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government, also generate the same kind of opposition and criticism?

Image: Scroll.in

The brutal shooting down of two persons, alleged to be Maoists have brought the spectre of extra-judicial killings, ‘encounters’ to haunt left-ruled Kerala. Last week, on Thursday, two persons were shot dead in a brutal fashion with several bullets being ploughed into the bodies of two persons. The killings took place in in the forests of Nilambur, close to the Kerala-Tamil Nadu border. Significantly, the Maoists killed in the encounter, Kuppu Devaraj, a senior member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), and Ajitha, a woman leader of the group’s Karnataka wing, do not have any cases registered against them in Kerala. As many as 19 bullets found inside of the body of Ajitha have shocked the conscience of rights defenders in the state.

Alliance partner in the LDF government in the state, CPI has raised serious questions over these actions. An article in the party mouthpiece Janayugom drew parallels between this encounter and the infamous fake encounter in 1970 in which Naxalite Arikkad Varghese was killed. Varghese was then close to the present chief minister, Pinarayi Vijayan. Chief Minister Vijayan has brushed aside the allegations and has chosen to stand with the police. On Sunday, he ordered an investigation by a magistrate into the incident.

The disease of “encounters”, or extra-judicial killings, by members of the police, security or armed forces is at least half a century old, but has now assumed epidemic proportions. In Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, the police have been on the rampage.

A report by the National Human Rights Commission of India states that half of the 2,560 police encounters reported between 1993 and 2009 were found to be false. Action was not taken against approximately 85 per cent of the culprits. Recently the brutal attack on eight undertrials outside the Bhopal Central jail had generated national outrage. Will these killings in Kerala, at the moment with an LDF government, also generate the same kind of opposition?

“No government has a right to kill the voices that dissent,” said Kanam Rajendran, state Secretary of the Communist Party of India, in Alappuzha. “Such steps to do away with the people who raise genuine issues of the downtrodden should never be adopted by a civilised society. The CPI organ said:“…if Varghese’s custodial killing had shaken the entire civil society in Kerala 40 years ago, leading to the conviction of the police officer responsible for it, this time round it is the duty of the Pinarayi government to tell the people what really happened at Nilambur.”

“There had been some Maoists activity in that area for the last few years and the police have been continuously attacked by this group,” Vijayan said in response to the allegations. “As far as I know this was a genuine police operation.” The Communist Party of India (Marxist) leads the ruling coalition, followed by the Communist Party of India and several smaller parties. The coalition came to power earlier this year.

With no credible explanation from the government as to why the two—a woman and a man—both not from the state, were killed and not captured, the suspicions of a fake-encounter are credible. That both were ripped apart by bursts of bullets and that the police couldn't produce any evidence of them being armed, makes the suspicions very strong.

For one, it is difficult to recall an encounter in Kerala in recent memory. Even when the previous Congress-led coalition – which is seemingly at ideological loggerheads with the Maoists – was in charge, despite conducting several raids in the Western Ghats section of the state, the police did not report encounters. All these years, a few arrests here and there were perhaps the maximum the administration did to keep Maoists at bay.

The demand for a fair enquiry has grown and the Pinarayi Vijayan government is under a lot of pressure primarily because the state's tolerance to "encounter" killings is very low. The state hasn't had one in the last 46 years since a legendary Naxalite leader, Arikkad Varghese, was killed in a fake encounter.

Varghese's killing is a perpetual blot on the state's public conscience. Its perpetrators of the crime had been sent to jail decades later when the police constable who pulled the trigger confessed in his old age out of crushing guilt. The police atrocities during the emergency later made the people of the state extremely vigilant against possible rights-abuses by the police and the government.

The CPM's problem will also be its historical baggage regarding the radical left. The most well-known Naxalite leader in the state, K Ajitha, has publicly recounted how inimical the CPM had been to the far left even in the 1960s when their ideology was taking roots in the state. In her memoirs, she quotes AK Gopalan, the leader after whom the party headquarters in Delhi is named, as saying that their effort would not help the labour-peasant movements, but would destroy the "revolutionary organisation" while strengthening the bourgeoise ruling class.Gopalan's problem was that his party was in power and his point was simple: our revolution was for the working class and against the bourgeois ruling class, but your revolution is against us. Pinarayi's problem is no different, says Ajitha.

Beyond the debate about encounter-killing, and whose ideology is really left, the more fundamental question is if Kerala really needs such an overkill? Does the Maoist situation in the state really warrant an excessive operation? Is to secure central government's anti-Maoists funds as some allege?

The Supreme Court on Encounters
In 2009, the Andhra Pradesh high court had held: “If a person goes with a gun to kill another, the intended victim is entitled to act in self-defence and if he so acts, there is no right in the former to kill him in order to prevent him from acting in self-defence.”
It held that, “where a police officer causes the death of a person acting or purporting to act in discharge of official duties or in self-defence as the case may be, the first information relating to such circumstance shall be recorded and registered as a first information report (FIR)”.

The Supreme Court unfortunately stayed this judgment on an appeal from the Andhra Pradesh Police Officers Association and has kept it pending all these years.

In 2014, another bench of the Supreme Court has laid down 16 guidelines to be followed in investigating police encounters resulting in death.

The number of encounter cases has gone up from 90,946 in 2008-09 to 105,664 in 2005-16.

In a detailed expose in Frontline (November 25, 2016), Divya Trivedi reported: “Statistics released by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) for 2015 show that Muslims constituted a greater share in the prison population than any other segment of people. While their share in India’s population as per Census 2011 was 14.2 per cent, their proportion in the undertrial prison population stood at 20.9 per cent.” The percentage of convicted Muslims was 15.8 per cent. The percentage of Muslims among detainees was also high at 23.8 per cent. In fact, they fared as badly as dalits and the tribal people. Together, these three communities constituted 39 per cent of the population but accounted for more than 55 per cent of all undertrials and 50.4 per cent of all convicts.”

The arrogance of state power and unaccountability are evident in such killings, whichever state they take place in.

The post Shooting to Kill: In LDF-ruled Kerala, Two Gruesome Encounter Killings appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Never Named Anyone, Says Wife Of Murdered Tribal On Professor Nandini Sundar – NDTV

Fri, 11 Nov 2016 12:17:19 +0000

Days after the murder of a villager in Chhattisgarh's Maoist-hit Bastar, the police cited his wife's complaint to name Delhi University professor Nandini Sundar and Jawaharlal Nehru University's Archana Prasad as murder suspects.

Sitting in her home at a village around 400 km from Raipur, Shamnath Baghel's wife Vimla told NDTV that she didn't name Nandini Sundar or anyone at all, even the killers.

Vimla says the family was sleeping on November 4, when the Maoists knocked on their door.

"When I did not open the door, they broke it down. They barged in and dragged my husband out of the house. They had guns, swords…They pointed a gun at me and asked me to stay inside. There were 15-20 men… I did not know any of them. I could not see them properly as they flashed a torch at me. They did not say a word. They took him and killed him on the road," said Vimla.

Did they take the name of Nandini Sundar? "No," she said, adding that she gave no names to the police.

The entire story may be read here

Meanwhile, the Chhatisgarh government assured the Supreme Court today that it will not arrest Delhi University professor Nandini Sundar, who was named as an accused in the alleged murder of a tribal person in Sukma district of Chhattisgarh.The assurance came as the bench of Justice Madan B Lokur and Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel indicated that they may put on hold the FIR in which Sundar and other civil society activists have been named as accused in the November 4 murder of Shamnath Baghel by Maoists.

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Online Petition demands Withdrawal of Charges against Sundar, Prasad and Others

The post Never Named Anyone, Says Wife Of Murdered Tribal On Professor Nandini Sundar – NDTV appeared first on SabrangIndia.