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ASSEMBLY ELECTIONS

Tamil Nadu: Battle lines 25Kerala: Old rivalsand a new front 30West Bengal:Mixed prospects 34Assam: Polling record 38

CONTROVERSY

Unrest in HyderabadCentral University 41Interview: Appa Rao Podile,Vice Chancellor 44

ECONOMIC OFFENCES

Vijay Mallya:Truant at large 47Behind thePanama Papers 125

WORLD AFFAIRS

Myanmar:Troubled transition 53Pakistan: Terror in Lahore 56Human Rights Council turnsgaze on caste, globally 59

AWARDS

Abel Prize in Mathematicsfor Andrew Wiles 62

ARCHAEOLOGY

In Karnataka, a doorwayto Jaina history 67Bahubali of Artipura 78

COVER STORY

War in BastarThe Chhattisgarh government’s all-out

attack on tribal residents of the miner-

al-rich region in the guise of combating

Maoists is more to facilitate corporate-

led mining and push the Sangh Pari-

var’s agenda. 4

RELATED STORIES

Deadly strike 8Interview: Chief Minister Raman Singh 10Targeting women 12Police state 15Persecuted minority 19Journalists under fire 20Interview: Manish Kunjam, CPI 22

Datacard: Battle for minerals 118

On the Cover

Security forces in the Bastar region, a digitally imaged photograph.

COVER DESIGN: V. SRINIVASAN

PHOTOGRAPH:PAVAN DAHAT

INTERVIEW

T.M. Krishna on widening theappeal of Carnatic music 91

CINEMA

Oscar-winning Hungarianmovie about the Holocaust 100National awards:

Celebrating commerce 103Honour for P. Susheela 106

ESSAY

Nationalism vs Hindutva 107Genesis of Bharat Mata 112

LEGAL ISSUES

Madras High Courtsuspends magistrate overgranite cases 116

COLUMN

C.P. Chandrasekhar:A setback for Tatas 50

Sashi Kumar:Crime as punishment 122

SCIENCE NOTEBOOK 120

BOOKS 83

LETTERS 129

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WAR ON BASTARThe Chhattisgarh government’s all-out attack on the poor tribal residents

of the mineral-rich region and all sources of support for them, in the guise

of combating the Maoists, actually has the twin objectives of crushing

opposition to corporate-led mining and pushing the Sangh Parivar’sHindutva agenda. BY DIVYA TRIVEDI AND VENKITESH RAMAKRISHNAN

COVER STORY

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THE MASSIVE STATE-SPONSORED REPRESSIONin Chhattisgarh, especially the Bastar region, over the

past few months under the informally named “Mission

2016” campaign marks new history on two important

counts. First, the manoeuvres employed by the govern-ment in general and the security agencies in particular in

the name of protecting the national interest and tackling

Maoist Left Wing Extremism (LWE) have acquired un-precedented dimensions in terms of vicious and brutal

interference in the everyday lives of common people. The

wars waged by the Indian state over many decades

against perceived and real threats to the country’s sover-eignty in places ranging from Nagaland to Kashmir have

often been ruthless, but even by those standards the

contemporary experience of Chhattisgarh through Mis-

sion 2016 has charted new levels of barbarity. Adivasis

and politically neutral activists seeking to support the

marginalised sections of the population are among thosespecially targeted by the police state.

Second, in political and ideological terms, Mission

2016 signifies yet another calibrated nuance in the Hin-dutva project of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the

Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS)-led Sangh Parivar

to capture and perpetuate power. The self-professed“Hindutva laboratories” of the Sangh Parivar have taken

different political and ideological shapes and hues in the

exercises relating to power politics and statecraft. While

the tactic was all-out aggression against Muslims in Guj-arat, which manifested itself in the form of the bestial

genocide of the minority community in 2002, in Odisha it took the form of rampant attacks against Christians. After 2010, the main product of the “laboratory” was

neoliberal Hindutva, which combined Hindutva com-

munalism with a corporate-driven development agenda.Narendra Modi emerged as the ultimate individual icon

of this agenda in 2014. Following the dismal track record

of the Modi-led Union government in the 2014-15 peri-

od, the Sangh Parivar constituents generated a “national-ism versus sedition” debate as a concomitant of the

pursuit of neoliberal Hindutva. What is being played out

in Chhattisgarh through Mission 2016 is primarily this

political and ideological pursuit, but with the creation of a police state, where a calculated and strategic suspen-

sion of the rule of law has been imposed to oppress and

suppress all voices of dissent that question the socio-economic machinations of the corporate-Hindutva poli-

tics nexus.

M U L T I P R O N G E D S T A T E O P P R E S S I O N

The presence of Maoist insurgents and the LWE threat

posed by them is, of course, the principal instrument of the Raman Singh-led BJP government in Chhattisgarh

in advancing this multipronged state oppression. Indeed,

Chhattisgarh is a key part of the Maoist red corridoridentified by the security agencies, which is spread acrossthe 10 States of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Uttar Pra-

desh, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Odisha, Madhya Pra-

desh, Jharkhand, Bihar and Chhattisgarh. Security operations of varying scales have been undertaken in the

State to counter LWE in the past decade and a half,

especially since 2004, the year the Communist Party of

India (Maoist) was formally announced following themerger of the People’s War Group and the Maoist Com-

munist Centre. Through this period, the armed tussle

between the Maoists and the state forces had, time andagain, captured attention on account of inhuman as-

saults and counter-assaults from both sides. Innocent

people were repeatedly affected in these assaults. A case

in point is Operation Greenhunt, which took aggressive

CRPF PERSONNEL at Chintalnar village in Sukma

district. The area is only a few kilometres from the site of

the Maoist ambush in which 76 security personnel were

killed in 2010.

P A V A N

D A H A T

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Salwa Judum and the new vigilantegroups. The excesses of the state

forces also swelled the ranks of the

Maoists. Political parties working inthe region failed to become as pop-

ular as the Maoists because they

would not communicate with Adiva-

sis in their language or work for the villagers like them. The armed group

of naxalites lived in forests, but there

were other groups like the Sanghamthat mingled with the residents and

helped out with whatever work was

required, from building of bunds

and fences to agriculture. An objective of Mission 2016,

though not formally stated, is to

crack down on the urban network of the CPI (Maoist) and demolish it.

This network, according to the secu-rity machinery behind Mission

2016, consists of overgroundMaoists and Maoist sympathisers.

Asides made by the people in the

security forces hint at cutting the“oxygen” of the CPI (Maoist) by fin-

ishing off the urban Maoist sympa-

thisers and thus “asphyxiating” theMaoists. The problem with this

premise is that anybody who dis-

agrees with the state’s version of democracy or national-

ism, or who raises questions about human rights violations by the paramilitary forces or simply refuses to

take sides in the unfolding war is branded a Maoist.

Reporters, researchers, activists, lawyers and studentseasily fit into this simple definition of a Maoist sympa-

thiser who deserves to be “exterminated”. Under this new

strategy, an atmosphere of insider versus outsider is also

being created in Chhattisgarh, where journalists, lawyersand activists from outside the State are seen as potential

threats to be barred from the State. Local people, espe-

cially in the big towns and cities, are being instigatedagainst this category of people. In a sense, the docu-

mentation of truth is being prevented by removing inde-pendent witnesses.

H A R A S S M E N T O F A D I V A S I L E A D E R S

Adivasi leaders with considerable outside support are

also subjected to brutal harassment—for instance, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Soni Sori. After surviving

physical and mental abuse of the worst kind while in

prison on charges of being a naxal courier, she became a fearless tribal activist and leader. In February, she was

attacked with an acid-like substance that burnt her face

and she had to be shifted to Delhi for treatment. When

AAP member Arvind Gupta filed a first informationreport (FIR) on her behalf over the incident, parchas(handbills) were thrown at his house, threatening him

and his family members. According to Soni Sori, her

attackers warned her not to raise the

issue of the encounter in Mardum

and told her to stop complainingagainst Kalluri; otherwise her

daughters would be attacked. A man

called Hadma was accused of being

a “rewardee” naxalite, with Rs.1 lakh

on his head. Paramilitary forceskilled him in Mardum. His wife and

other villagers insisted that he wasnot a naxalite and produced docu-

ments such as an Aadhaar card, a

voter ID and a bank account pass-

book to prove it. He had earlier beenpicked up and spent two years in

prison. Soni Sori visited the area and

took the family to the Mardum po-lice station in an attempt to lodge an

FIR. Kalluri had often given state-

ments against her in press confer-ences, ordering her ostracisation,and Soni Sori had unsuccessfully

tried to file an FIR against him un-

der the Scheduled Caste and Sched-uled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities)

Act.

Under pressure from the nation-

al media and civil society, the gov-ernment constituted a special team

to investigate the attack on Soni So-

ri, but she said the team was harassing her instead in

mundane ways, like giving an appointment to record hertestimony but making her wait for hours or changing the

venue and the time of the appointment at the last minute

and then not turning up at all. Meanwhile, her sisterDhaneshwari and brother-in-law Ajay Markam were

picked up for questioning. Her nephew Lingaram Kodo-

pi, who was also arrested earlier, said that attempts were being made to frame the family members for the attack

on Soni Sori. They havebeen living under severe pressure

for several years. He was a journalist but was not beingallowed to work, and frustrated with this last attempt to

break them, Lingaram Kodopi declared that he would

end his life if these tactics did not stop. These wereattempts to intimidate and destroy the support systemthat was rallying behind her and the movement, said Soni

Sori. “They want to drive me out of Bastar. But I will not

go. After all that has happened to me, I have stoppedfeeling pain. If Kalluri has a problem with me, he should

face me directly and not go after other people.” When she

was attacked, the framing of Jawaharlal Nehru Uni-

versity (JNU) as an anti-national university had juststarted and Kanhaiya Kumar had just been arrested.

Kalluri lashed out at the JNU student Umar Khalid in a

statement, accusing him of being a part of the conspiracy behind the attack on Soni Sori since he had mentioned

Soni Sori and the Jagdalpur Legal Aid Group (JagLAG)

in his speech on the campus. This statement, coming

from a person with the rank of an I.G., not only was seen

SONI SORI in Raipur. The tribal activist

has been subjected to brutal

harassment.

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as ridiculous but also exposed the way in which he made baseless statements and ac-

cused people without proof.

When Soni Sori was attacked, she wasreturning from Jagdalpur after taking leave

of a team of women lawyers who were

hounded out of Bastar. JagLAG has been

working there since July 2013, and was ha-rassed for more than a year and accused of

being a “naxalite front” by the police and the

SEM. A resolution was passed by the Chhat-tisgarh State Bar Council challenging its

right to practise in the State as it was regis-

tered elsewhere, but JagLAG received an

interim order that enabled it to continue topractise. When the police started putting

pressure on its landlord, a driver, by im-

pounding his car, the team was forced toleave. After some days, when Shalini Gera, one of the

lawyers of JagLAG, went back to the Jagdalpur court tomeet a lawyer, she was gheraoed by around 100 ad-

vocates and threatened, said Isha Khandel-

wal, another lawyer with JagLAG. “They

told her to get out and had she stayed a minute longer she would have been at-

tacked for sure.”

A C T I V I S T T A R G E T E D

The way JagLAG was hounded out seemedto be part of a modus operandi, which wasalso used against the independent human

rights activist and researcher Bela Bhatia.

Bela Bhatia has been visiting Bastar since2006, and in January 2015 she decided to

move there full time. In October 2015, her

landlady, a tailor who made clothing forthe Central Reserve Police Force (CPRF),

asked her to vacate the house on flimsy

grounds. “They wanted me to move out

because of Somari, my dog, even though we had lived all

those months without any trouble. For a minute, I won-dered if they were under pressure of some kind, but I

THE explosion, near Malewara on the Sukma-Dante- wada road, created a crater some two metres deep and

more than three and a half metres wide. It was so

powerful that a tank could not have survived it. The minitruck that passed over it was thrown high into the air

and blown to pieces. The bodies of seven Central Re-serve Police Force (CRPF) jawans were found 100to 150

metres away. They must have died instantaneously. The wire that presumably connected the trigger to the explo-

sive was 120 metres long.

It was 3 p.m. on March 30. The sun had a long timeto go before it would set. So, barely 120 metres away,

hidden behind trees, 15 to 20 insurgents of the Commu-

nist Party of India (Maoist) were waiting. They probably

belonged to the People’s Liberation Guerilla Army, a structured and trained armed force of the CPI (Maoist)

which undertakes small-scale military operations

against State and Central police forces. It is probably bigenough to make an impact but not big enough to invite

mass deployment of retaliatory State forces against it.

After a while, they emerged from the bushes toensure that the CRPF men were dead—they fired at

some bodies. Local sources later told the police that

some of them were carrying traditional weapons. Per-

haps they wanted to take the weapons of the dead CRPFmen. But there were no weapons on them. It was not an

armoured vehicle and the men were travelling in plain-

clothes. The jawans killed were Sub-Inspector D. Vijay Raj, constables Pradeep Tirkey, Rupnarayan Das, De-

vendra Chourasia, Ranjan Dash and Mritunjoy Muk-

harjee, and driver Saindane Nana Usesing. They were

non-combat staff of the CRPF’s 230th battalion, and

were from the Ghusaras camp in Dantewada. Some of them were returning after having taken leave for Holi.

For at least two of them, it was their first posting. Their

vehicle was alone; it was not accompanied by a support

party, or a road opening party which is sometimes sentfirst as a decoy.

Meetings were called to figure out what had gone

wrong. Chief Minister Raman Singh said a probe would

be conducted to find out whether or not norms werefollowed. A special meeting of the anti-naxalite wing

was called at the residence of the officiating Home

Minister, Ajay Chandrakar. “The Maoists carried outthe attack out of frustration. We make sure we take

extreme precautions, but some mistakes happen. New

instructions will be issued as per the situation. TheMaoists are on the back foot and are targeting the

innocent now,” Chandrakar reportedly said.

Conjectures were made. The Maoists could have dug

a secret tunnel to plant the explosives, said the police.The Maoists had paid off a corrupt contractor to place

the explosives while the road was being built, said re-porters. In all probability, information was leaked fromthe inside, said insiders. “A surprise movement was

under way. I don’t know how the news got leaked. The

way the incident happened, it is clear that someone gave

specific inputs. We will investigate to find out what went wrong,” K. Durga Prasad, Director General of the CRPF,

told reporters after paying homage to the deceased.

One of the men was carrying an air cooler for Scout,a sniffer dog who had fallen ill. For the media, an

emotional tale could be woven around a Maoist ambush

after a long time and they made the most of it. Headlinesscreamed: “7 men lost lives to save sick dog.”

The jawans had stopped at a marketplace on their

way to the Ghusaras camp. Maybe they should not have,

Deadly strike

THE ECONOMIST Jean

Dreze, who, along with

his partner Bela Bhatia,

has been accused of

being a naxalite.

R A N J E E T K U M

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wanted to live in the village anyway, so I moved to Parpa,”she told Frontline. Once the police found out where shehad moved to, pressure started building on her landlord,

who is a peon in a government office. He was called to thepolice station. He is a Gondi Adivasi and, despite the

pressure, did not ask Bela Bhatia to move out. The police

have visited the village several times and questioned

people. They have also videographed her house. Mem- bers of the Mahila Ekta Manch took out a rally against

her, calling her a “naxali dalal” and asking her and her

videshi pati (foreign husband), Jean Dreze (the well-known economist), to stop collaborating with naxalites.

In an open letter, Jean Dreze said: “I was surprised to

hear yesterday that some people had come to my partner

Bela’s house near Jagdalpur and instigated her neigh- bours against her. They took out a procession in the

neighbourhood, shouting slogans like ‘Bela Bhatia mur-

dabad’ and ‘Bela Bhatia Bastar chodo’.... Anyone whothinks that Bela and I are naxalites is seriously out of

touch with reality. Bela has already refuted these chargesand clarified the nature of her work in Bastar in a state-

ment published in the local media (and also in Catch-news). My own views and activities are an open book.Had the agitators bothered to find out about them, they would have thought twice about levelling these charges. I

am a development economist associated with Ranchi

University and the Delhi School of Economics. I live inRanchi, but I come to Bastar from time to time to spend

time with Bela. Most of my work is concerned withhunger, poverty, education, health and other aspects of

social policy. I am a close colleague of Amartya Sen, Angus Deaton, Nicholas Stern and other economists who

should be sent to jail if I am a naxalite, according to the

Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act.”Bela Bhatia was part of the team that had helped

Adivasi women file FIRs when there were instances of

gang rapes by security forces personnel in the interior

villages, and her harassment could be because of that,among other reasons. When Bela Bhatia was asked why

she only raised questions about violence on the part of the

police but never about violence from the naxals, she said:“There is a significant constitution of people who are

said some police officers. Maybe that is where the trail

began. There was a school barely 100 metres away.There were a few houses. There was an entire village on

the Sukma-Dantewada road. The Malewara market was

nearby. It was a populated area. The explosion was notonly powerful but also sophisticated and well planned.

Perhaps it was intended for another target, not CRPF

men in plainclothes.“Maybe, the Maoists were waiting for some other

party, and this particular CRPF party came early and got

hit because of some confusion,” Dinesh Pratap Up-

adhyay, Deputy Inspector General of the CRPF, Dante- wada range, told reporters.

This is not the first, or the deadliest, of attacks

against paramilitary forces by naxalites in Chhattisgarh. Although anti-insurgency action usually involves mixed

forces, the maximum casualty is reported from theranks of the CRPF because it is not equipped or trained

effectively for jungle warfare, say experts. They are also

soft targets.Janardan Sonawane, a jawan of the CRPF’s 111th

battalion, was injured when an improvised explosive

device (IED) exploded near Sameli village of Dantewa-da. He was providing security for road construction.

Head Constable Ranga Raghavan was also on similarduty when he was killed, and four others from the 217th

battalion of the CRPF were injured on the Chhattis-garh-Telangana border near Muraliguda village.

There have also been encounter deaths. Two Border

Security Force jawans were killed and four others werecritically injured in an encounter with the Maoists in the

Becha forests of Kanker district. Two jawans of the

CRPF’sspecial unit, the Commando Battalion for Reso-

lute Action (CoBRA), were killed and more than 12others injured in an encounter with the Maoists in

Sukma district.

There is no clear collated data shared by the forceson the number of CRPF men killed, but they do have

data on the number of Maoists “apprehended”: 208, of

whom eight were rewardees in 2015. According to the

Chhattisgarh Home Ministry, Maoist surrenders havegone up multifold: 39 in 2013, 327 in 2015, and 368

until March 2016. As far as encounters go, there were 46

in 2015 and 46 until March 2016. S.R.P. Kalluri, In-spector General, Bastar range, has time and again quot-

ed these figures to claim that the forces are gaining

ground against the Maoists. He claims that under Mis-

sion 2016, naxalism will be stamped out from Bastar.But attacks by the Maoists, like the recent one, give the

lie to such tall claims.

Divya Trivedi

THE REMAINS of the CRPF vehicle blown up by

naxalites.

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called naxal peedit [victim] and to a certain extent I think it is a valid question to the human rights movement of

this country as to what is our stand regarding the excessesor atrocities happening from that side. They are likesitting ducks. As they are under the protection of the

police, they are targeted by the Maoists and therefore in

some ways they are available constituency that the statecan mobilise for its own purposes.”

It is an accepted fact that the Maoists occupied and

became strong in areas where there already was an ab-

sence of governance. For decades, neither developmentnor administrative agendas of the Indian state acknowl-

edged or ventured into these villages inside the forests.

No electricity or irrigation or ration shop or school or any of the other structures associated with modernity was

taken to these areas by the state. These were the forgotten

people of the country. When the Maoists from Andhra

Pradesh entered these zones and set up their own Janata-

na Sarkar, taking up and solving the issues of the most

marginalised people of the country, the state suddenly

woke up to their existence and launched a full-blown waragainst the most disadvantaged people. It is to be recalled

that the Maoists became popular amongst Adivasis when

they rescued them from the clutches of forest and policeofficials who used to harass them for cultivating land in

the reserve forests and put an end to the domination of

Adivasis by the Patel-patwari. The price an Adivasi could

obtain for tendu leaves was substantially raised, and it became instrumental in bettering their lives.

Another observation about the anti-Maoist operation

of the security forces is founded upon the existence of richnatural resources in Chhattisgarh, particularly the areas

where the tribal people live. It has been repeatedly ob-

served that corporate interests have directed the govern-

ment policy and security drives in such a manner as toevict tribal peoplefrom their homeland and occupy those

RAMAN SINGH has headed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Chhat-

tisgarh continuously since December 2003.

In this e-mail interview to Frontline, thethree-time Chief Minister speaks about thechallenges facing the State and the issues

that are still being addressed. Excerpts:

How do you view these 12 years in power?

It was a great opportunity and a big

challenge to lead a State that has tremen-

dous potential and also faces pressing prob-

lems. At the end of the 12th year and in my third tenure,some of that potential is still untapped and some of the

issues are still being addressed. However, I must say that at the end of the day I sleep with the satisfaction

that everyone in this State is getting two square meals a

day. The State, once known for starvation deaths, mal-nutrition and a high infant mortality rate [IMR], is now

ranked far higher and has been praised even by our

opponents. The State has been appreciated by no less

than the Supreme Court of India.

But the BJP government under your leadership has

not been able to resolve the Maoist insurgency in the

southern belt of the State. With the BJP in power at

the Centre, can a fixed time frame be expected to

completely end the insurgency?

We are moving strategically and systematically.There is no silver bullet to the problem. As I said in the

Budget speech, naxalism will be wiped out through a

two-pronged effort—development and security mea-

sures. Our approach is for holistic devel-opment in the tribal areas, with specialfocus on education, health, nutrition and

agriculture. We provide food and nutrition

security to all tribal people. We have estab-

lished Livelihood Colleges in naxalite-af-fected districts, namely, Sukma, Bijapur,

Narayanpur, Dantewada, Kondagaon,

Kanker and Bastar [Jagdalpur]. A largenumber of tribal youths and surrendered

naxalites are undergoing vocational train-

ing in these colleges and enhancing their

employability. The government is running Prayas resi-dential schools in five divisional headquarters of the

naxalite-affected areas where students of Classes 11 and

12 are given special coaching to appear for engineeringand medical entrance examinations. Chhattisgarh

spends 36 per cent of its budget on tribal-populated

areas; tribal people constitute 32 per cent of the State’s

population. In other words, Chhattisgarh spends a greater part of its budget on tribal areas in comparison

to its population ratio. Additionally, we are working to

reduce the isolation of Bastar by improving road, railand air connectivity and the telecom network there.

In the past six months, four journalists have been

arrested by the police in Bastar. One journalist was

forced to leave Jagdalpur. A recent report of the

Editors Guild of India says that the media work under

tremendous pressure in Chhattisgarh. Why are the

media not being allowed to work in a free and fair

manner in the State?

‘We are working to reduce isolation of Bastar’Interview with Raman Singh, Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh. BY P A V A N D A H A T

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We are committed to ensuring the freedom of the

press and we will never allow any attempt to suppress

any dissenting voice. Freedom of the press is very close

to my heart. The moment this incident came to my notice, I held discussions with several senior editors. If

there has been any aberration, I am committed to set-

ting it right.I would like to underline that there is a huge battle

raging in Bastar. There is a sense of anger among the

people against the naxalites and the way they are notallowing development and denying even basic facilities.

There is a rise in the number of people killed by the

naxalites. The development on the economic and indus-

trial fronts in the rest of Chhattisgarhhas increased ourresolve to empower the tribal people of Bastar. We will

do everything possible, within our powers, to deliver

food security, dependable health care, and equal educa-tional opportunity to every tribal family of Bastar.

The moment the unfortunate attack on Soni Sori[Adivasi leader] took place, a first information report

was filed and a special team was constituted to investigate the incident. I personally directed our Resi-

dent Commissioner in Delhi to visit her at the Apollo

Hospital there. The Principal Secretary [Home], along with the Collector and the Superintendent of Police,

also visited her home at Gidam to reassure her family

members about their safety, and security was immedi-

ately provided to them. Soni Sori was given ‘Y’ category security. She contested the last Assembly elections on

the Aam Aadmi Party ticket.

Politics and elections have their own dynamics,hence we provide security to MLAs and politicians

whenever necessary. But she declined the offer. We are

committed to providing Soni Sori the security she wants

and needs at all times. We have also offered security toBela Bhatia [activist] so that she can do her work [in

Chhattisgarh] unhindered. I condemn the attack on the

Central Reserve Police Force personnel in the strongest

terms. This dastardly act shows the desperation of thenaxalites as they are rapidly losing ground.

Chhattisgarh was recently in the news for farmers

suicides. The National Crime Records Bureau report

ranked the State fourth among the States with high

rates of farmers suicides. Has your government notbeen able to fulfil the needs of the agricultural sector?

We have taken decisive, coherent and concrete steps

for the welfare of the farmers. Chhattisgarh is known as

the rice bowl of the country. Duringmy tenure, the Stategovernment has ensured that each and every grain of

paddy is procured from farmers, paying the minimum

support price. We have taken effective steps to provide

remunerative prices to farmers against paddy procure-ment and we have also been providing bonus for the

same.

The various irrigation projects and schemes imple-

mented by the BJP governmenthas helped increase thearea under irrigation from 22 per cent to 34 per cent.

About 3.62 lakh irrigation pumps have been electrified

in the past 12 years. In view of the scanty rainfall last year, 117 of the 146 tehsils have been declared drought-

hit. We have spent nearly Rs.450 crore by way of relief

to farmers. In the upcoming kharif season, we will bedistributing a maximum of one quintal of paddy seeds

free of cost to farmers of drought-hit areas. We have

waived off land revenue in the drought-hit areas, and

we have also doubled the financial aid under the Muk-hyamantri Kanya Vivaah Yojana, that is, we are provid-

ing Rs.30,000 for the marriage of each daughter of a drought-hit farmer.

Chhattisgarh ranks fourth in the country in terms of

paddy production. The State has received the National

Krishi Karman Award three times for rice production

and once for pulses production. The credit of thisachievement goes to our hardworking farmers and our

farmer-friendly policies.

lands. There are, apparently, a number of senior security

officials who boast that no amount of criticism against

them in the media would work as they have been specifi-cally sent to the region to help set up big projects for big

corporates. On the ground, one can see increasing mil-

itarisation where new mines are found. Whenever a cor-porate sets up shop, forces would surround it to protect it

from the so-called naxal violence and clear the area of

Adivasis. There are several instances where those who

refused to vacate have been branded naxalites and ha-rassed. Until a decade ago, non-governmental organisa-

tions could work in these areas in the fields of education,

women’s welfare or malnutrition. But any organisationthat works sincerely is being hounded now. A case in

point is the renowned Ramakrishna Mission, which used

to help with the public distribution system and health

care earlier. Evidently, the perpetrators of Mission 2016do not want any witnesses to talk about their operation.

This is indeed a nuanced product from the Hindutva

laboratory which has already become a model at the

national level for the Sangh Parivar. The manner in which the BJP and other Sangh Parivar constituents have

latched on to the nationalism versus sedition debate andadvanced it underscores this. After all, several top BJP

leaders, including party president Amit Shah, Home

Minister Rajnath Singh and Finance Minister Arun Jait-

ley, have repeatedly claimed that fighting Maoist and jehadist tendencies is the contemporary form of uphold-

ing nationalism and countering sedition. Branding peo-

ple Maoists and jehadists in the name of nationalism was what happened at JNU in Delhi and Hyderabad Central

University in Hyderabad. Chhattisgarh has shown how

this can be run as a state terror project.

Datacard: Battle for minerals on page 118.

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THE SO-CALLED “LIBERATED ZONES” IN

Bastar are best understood while travelling on the newly

built 42-kilometre road that cuts through forest land between Bijapur, the district headquarters, and Basagu-

da. The entire stretch is under the constant watch of seven fortified Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF)camps and three police stations, all located strategically.

Platoons of mixed forces on combing operations march-

ing close to anti-landmine vehicles every few kilometres

leave no one in doubt that this is a war zone. The villagesinside the forests cannot be accessed without the direct

supervision of the nearest CRPF camp. Behind one such

CRPF camp in Timapura, 5 km inside the forest andconnected by a dirt track accessible only on foot or by

tractor or motorcycle, is the village of Nendra, officially

known as Bellam Lendra.

The people of Nendra recalled with chilling detail thehorrific events that lasted four days from January 11.

According to them, hundreds of men from paramilitary

forces such as CoBRA (Commando Battalion for Reso-lute Action), CRPF, District Reserve Group (a small but

effective counter-insurgency force of handpicked Adiva-

sis and former special police officers who know the ter-

rain and the language well) and the local police stormedinto Nendra and fired several rounds of ammunition

indiscriminately in the air. This is not unusual. Whenev-

er this happens, the men of the village, in fear of being beaten up, shot dead, or picked up by the forces, run for

their lives and hide in the forests. The women, the chil-

dren and the elderly are left behind. The forces then

proceed to devour the entire food ration, consume thechicken and steal goats or anything else that they fancy.

In Nendra, a fact-finding team from the Women AgainstSexual Violence and State Repression (WSS) and the

Coordination of Democratic Rights Organisations

(CDRO), which reached the village later, listed the items

taken away or consumed by the forces: 200 birds, 40goats, gold and silver jewellery, oil cans, sacks of rice, dal ,

vegetables and a music system for the tractor that was

bought by several villagers collectively. Anyone who triedto stop them was severely beaten up. They stayed for four

days and nights. “They sucked that tree there dry for

alcohol,” said a villager, pointing to a tree whose bark releases a local form of liquor. It is not unusual for the

forces to heap abuse on the women or threaten them with

rape, but this time they crossed all limits.

During the day, they were out in the forests on “comb-ing operations”, but by night and morning converted the

village into their private fiefdom, sexually abusing over 15 women. The women were stripped, abused and raped atgunpoint, even when they tried to resist the theft of their

livestock, a woman who was raped told Frontline. Two or

more men would hold a woman down and cover her face

with a cloth while one or more proceeded to rape her,sometimes in front of her children. All rapes were gang

rapes. According to the WSS report: “At any given point

in time, the women reported, there may have been fourpeople in one house, three in another, and five in the

third, so the acts of sexual abuse occurred simultaneous-

ly—even perhaps, in synchronicity. This effectively dis-

credits the notion that a specific group of four or five menmay be the culprits.” When the women protested, they

were threatened with dire consequences.

Residents also complained that they were held ac-

Targeting womenThe southern districts of

Chhattisgarh are in a war zone

where the state apparently uses brutal sexual assault of Adivasi

women as a deliberate intimidation

strategy. BY DIVYA TRIVEDI IN NENDRA, BIJAPUR

COVER STORY

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13 F R O N T L I N E . A P R I L 2 9 , 2 0 1 6

countable for incidents involving naxal violence even

when the police had no evidence against them. A testimo-ny in the WSS report states: “One of the men from the

security forces even issued a warning: ‘Once we get ourorders from Narendra Modi, we will come back and wipe

out everything; we will put you and your children inside

the houses and burn you all down.’ When she was asked who Narendra Modi is, she said she didn’t know.” When

the paramilitary forces left after four days, all the ration

had been depleted, the cattle destroyed and the women

humiliated and in pain and distress. The “combing”oper-ation was declared a success. Only one house in the entire

village was untouched, a resident told Frontline.

Nendra falls in the Hirapur panchayat in Usur block and, like many tribal villages, is an interior village inside a

forest area and has less than 100 Muria Adivasi houses.

One has to rely on pag dandis (tracks) and trees whichserve as signposts and it can be a challenge for outsidersto reach the village. It is believed that it is one of the

villages that falls in the Maoists’ movement patterns and

is visited by them. For the state and the armed forces, theentire village, then, becomes suspect, and no proof is

required. The forces see every resident as a sangham

member (unarmed worker or member of a Maoist front

who helps villagers with sundry odd jobs in agriculturelike bund building) who is in cahoots with the Maoists

and find it difficult to distinguish between a Maoist and a

resident. But that does not justify the looting, the harass-ment and rape of women, or the beating and killing of

men in these areas. A resident said: “The Maoists and the

security forces demand to be fed at gunpoint. Do we havea choice in either case?”

Nendra has been on the radar of the state and the

Maoists for quite some time. In 2007, the entire village

was burnt down by Salwa Judum. Not once, but twice.The women of Nendra are not new to sexual violence

either, having been subjected to it during the Judum

days. Since 2001, 20 men from the village have beenillegally detained or arrested, and have spent long terms

in jails, sometimes six to seven years, before being acquit-

ted.The one house that was untouched during the four

days of siege belongs to Rahul Madkam. He was a naxal-lite for 10 years, but he surrendered later and is now with

CoBRA. Yogesh, Pandu, Mangesh and Motu are theothers accused by the women as perpetrators. They too

used to work with the naxalites but later surrendered and

now work for the police. Surrendered Maoists are impor-tant informants for the state in the fight against naxalites.

The sequence of events in Nendra is chillingly similar

to other incidents spread across half a dozen villages over

several days. A team from the WSS documented some of these incidents and the local media reported them. In

October last year, paramilitary forces stormed into Ped-

agellur, where they wreaked similar havoc: raping wom-en and looting homes. They did not stop with Pedagellur,

but proceeded to nearby Chinagellur, Burgicheru, Gun-

dam and Pegdapalli. A 14-year-old girl and a pregnant

SOME OF THE RESIDENTS of Nendra village. The security forces suspect every resident to be in cahoots with theMaoists. (Right) A blockade by the Maoists, for whom road is a symbol of state oppression.

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F R O N T L I N E . A P R I L 2 9 , 2 0 1 6 14

woman were gang-raped. The pregnant woman was

stripped and repeatedly dunked in a stream and gang-raped. Many women reported being stripped, beaten on

their thighs and buttocks, their lower clothing lifted up

and being threatened with further sexual violence.The women travelled several kilometres to the police

station to give testimonies and file a first information

report (FIR), but the police were unsympathetic, con-tending that rape was unconscionable but inevitable giv-

en the threat of naxalism in the area. The Superintendent

of Police finally relented and filed an FIR against un-

named persons after several days because of pressurefrom civil society groups and the arrival of members of

the State Women’s Commission. The FIR charged theperpetrators under Section 376 (2) of the Indian PenalCode, which pertains to rape by a policeman or a public

servant. The demand to file cases under the Scheduled

Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act

was not heeded to on the grounds that while the victims were S.Ts the community of the perpetrators remained

unknown. After news of the operation became widely

known, several other organisations, such as the local branch of the Congress Party and the Sarva Adivasi

Samaj, the Adivasi Mahasabha, and the National Human

Rights Commission took cognisance but nothing came of

it. But many more instances of gang rape by the security forces came to light.

A P A T T E RN O F V I OL E N C E

Around the same time as the Nendra incident, Kunna in

Sukma district also witnessed similar sexual and physical violence and looting. A WSS report on the incidents said

that breasts were squeezed and nipples pinched, with the

assumption that if they were not lactating mothers, they would be naxalites. In Chotegadam, a 21-year-old boy,

Lalu Sodi, was beaten up so badly that he succumbed to

his injuries. Girls were disrobed, dragged to the school

grounds and paraded for long distances while beingabused and mocked by members of the security forces.

According to the report, the attacks were so timed in

these villages that the men of the village could not run

away, and many were caught, beaten and arrested.

A systematic pattern of brutal sexual assault and rape by paramilitary forces stationed in the southern districts

of Chhattisgarh is emerging as a new weapon of terror-ising Adivasis under the guise of fighting naxalites. In the

past six months, three incidents of mass gang rapes and

sexual assault on entire villages by paramilitary forceshave been reported,but activists in the area say there may

be more incidents that have not been reported for two

reasons: the distance between far-flung villages where

word travels slow, and the fear of further terror. What ishappening is a conscious process of intimidation by

which all men and women are kept in a constant state of

fear. The scale and frequency of the human rights vio-lations and the large number of paramilitary forces that

have actively participated in them show that they are

common knowledge in the State administration. The

absence of official reprimands or punishment implies thetacit approval of these attacks.

Such attacks are also openly justified as these interior

villages are considered Maoist liberated zones. Construc-tion of roads in these zones has been a problem between

the Maoists and the state, which the latter seems to have

won for now. Motorable roads going up to Sarkeguja

have been built in the past two years, enabling military

activity and the capture of erstwhile naxal areas. Most of the villages there do not have any schools or health

centres; people have never heard about the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act

(MGNREGA); they do not have Aadhaar numbers, bank

accounts or electricity. The only time they get to see the

face of the government is before the elections whenpoliticians arrive to arrange feasts in exchange for votes.

Government officials often use the fig leaf of Maoist

opposition to justify the lack of implementation of gov-ernment schemes. The only other face of the government

visible to Adivasis is that of the security forces who arrive

with guns to threaten, rape, abuse, steal their animals

and kill their people. Adivasis exposed only to vote-bank politics or virulent paramilitary force would find it diffi-

cult to trust the government to do right by them.

IN NENDRA VILLAGE.

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COVER STORY

IN MARCH 2011, A GROUP OF SPECIAL POLICE

officers (SPOs) and members of the anti-Maoist vigilantegroup, Salwa Judum, attacked the convoy of social activ-

ist Swami Agnivesh at Dornapal town in Sukma district,

when he was trying to fetch help to three villages alleged-ly attacked and ransacked by security forces and SPOs. A

Jagdalpur-based television news reporter who accompa-

nied Swami Agnivesh that day recounted the horrormany years later, when he was the bureau chief of a

regional news channel. “A huge mob, armed with lathis,

stones and traditional weapons, was marching towards

us. Some of them were hiding AK-47s and SLRs. As the

mob neared our convoy, stone throwing began. The mob

was not even ready to listen to a senior police officer who was sitting inside the vehicle of Swami Agnivesh. I tried

to film the attack with my small camera but soon realisedthat some of the protesters were coming after me with big

stones. I can still feel the terror of that day. One of them

carried a big stone and walked alongside me, abusing. Icould see death in front of me but did not react and kept

walking back slowly to our vehicles which were moving

back towards Sukma. Luckily, he did not throw the stone

and I managed to get into the vehicle and got back toSukma.”

Police stateLoosely formed vigilante groups are terrorising anyone speaking out

against police atrocities in Bastar, with the ulterior motive of forcing

people to part with their lands and migrate to other areas. BY PAVAN DAHAT

THE PEOPLE OF CHINTAGUFA, the most troubled village in Bastar range. They accuse CRPF men from the nearby

camp of atrocities. The security forces say the villagers are Maoist supporters and that there have been instances of firing at

the camp from the village.

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Such excesses were common during the heyday of

Salwa Judum and they were well documented and re-

ported by the English press, which led to petitions in theSupreme Court and the subsequent ban on Salwa Judum

and SPOs in 2011.

In January this year, four Jagdalpur-based journal-ists were visibly worried when they told this correspond-

ent in Raipur that the situation was “going from bad to

worse. What used to happen in Dornapal, Bijapur and

Karkeli during Judum days will now happen in majortowns like Jagdalpur, Dantewada and Bijapur.”

When asked for reasons for the worry, one of themreplied: “The entire Salwa Judum network, its leadersand SPOs have been given a new lease of life by some

officers heading the Bastar police,and the former Judum

guys are back with their self-proclaimed anti-Maoist

armies under different names.”The reporters’ fears came true in less than a month. A

police team asked the freelance journalist and former

head of the International Committee of Red Cross inChhattisgarh Malini Subramaniam why she was visiting

the forests and writing about tribal issues.

On February 7, a group of around 20 men gathered

outside Malini Subramaniam’s house in Jagdalpur whereshe lived with her 14-year-old daughter. The group was

furious over her reports regarding “fake” Maoist surren-

ders, “fake” encounters and “alleged” atrocities on tribal women by the security forces, and chanted slogans. Next

day, her house was pelted with stones and her car was

damaged. The police took two days to register a com-

plaint. According to Chhattisgarh Home Minister Ajay Chandrakar, a complaint was registered against un-

known assailants and investigation was on. The Home

Minister used the words “unknown assailants” despiteMalini Subramaniam identifying three people belonging

to a self-proclaimed anti-Maoist vigilante group active in

Jagdalpur, called the Samajik Ekta Manch (SEM), one of

them a nephew of the local Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)MLA.

Soon after, in what appeared to be a coordinated

move, the landlords of Malini Subramaniam and Jagdal-pur Legal Aid Group (JagLAG), a team of lawyers provid-

ing free legal help to undertrials in Chhattisgarh, asked

them to vacate their houses and forced them to leaveBastar, diminishing the last ray of hope for thousands of

tribal people locked up in different overcrowded jails of

Bastar. This was followed by an attack on tribal activistand Aam Aadmi Party leader Soni Sori with an acid-like

substance on February 20. Some self-proclaimed jour-

nalists and leaders, close to senior police officers posted

in Jagdalpur, formed various WhatsApp groups and be-gan a scurrilous campaign against everyone raising the

issue of alleged fake Maoist surrenders and alleged fake

encounters. Those who questioned the police version were branded as Maoist sympathisers. Journalists and

activists speaking out against the atrocities on Bastar’s

tribal people were forcibly added to these WhatsApp

groups and abused.

The self-proclaimed vigilantes were successful intrapping a fearless journalist from Dantewada named

Prabhat Singh. Prabhat Singh had been critical of S.R.P.Kalluri, Inspector General (I.G.) of Police for Bastar

range, and had reported many police atrocities in Dante-

wada. He was arrested for a sentence he posted on a

WhatsApp group about someone sitting in the lap of “mama”. A complaint was registered under Section 67 of

the Information Technology Act, and according to

Singh’s brother, he was abducted by some plainclothespolicemen in a Scorpio vehicle. According his lawyer,

Singh was tortured all night in police custody.

Next day, Dantewada and Jagdalpur police suddenly realised that there were “grave offences” registeredagainst Singh a year ago. He was produced in court with

four cases against him and was sent to judicial remand.

On March 26, Deepak Jaiswal, a journalist with the localHindi daily Dainik Divyashakti and a close associate of Singh, went to the Dantewada court to witness the pro-

ceedings in his case. The Dantewada police woke up to a

case filed against Jaiswal in 2015 and swiftly arrested himand sent him to jail. The fault of these two journalists was

that they wrote and reported independently and did not

buckle under police pressure. With the arrest of Singh,

every journalist based in Bastar is scared to write even a sentence against the police.

On March 26, Bela Bhatia, a social activist and re-

searcher and the partner of well-known economist JeanDreze, who resides in a village eight kilometres from

Jagdalpur, was told to leave Bastar by members of a

vigilante group and policemen.Meanwhile, a “rumour of the possibility of a journal-

ist getting killed in cross-firing” is being spread in Bastar

these days, apparently to scare the national media from

coming to Bastar and reporting from the ground. Almostevery human rights group, lawyer, journalist and politi-

cal worker who questions the police version of the hap-

penings in Bastar is either out of the district or in jail. When asked about the current situation of Bastar, a

senior politician from the region said: “This is just the

S.R.P. KALLURI , the Inspector General of Police for

Bastar range.

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continuation of Salwa Judum or you can call it Salwa

Judum 2. But this time you won’t find anything on paper.No registered organisation but loosely formed vigilante

groups in order to have an escape route if the case comes

up in the higher judiciary.”There is a common link to the 2011 attack on Swami

Agnivesh’s convoy near Dornapal, the ransacking of

three villages in Sukma and the current crackdown on

social activists, independent journalists and humanrights lawyers in Bastar: Shiv Ram Prasad Kalluri. In

March 2011, as Special Superintendent of Police (SSP) of

the then undivided Dantewada district, Kalluri, who was

the most controversial officer in the State, was uncere-

moniously removed after the two incidents. He has been

Inspector General of Police of Bastar range since July 2014 and openly supports Salwa Judum, calls himself the

biggest enemy of the Maoists and their “urban network of

sympathisers” and speaks only to “nationalist media”.

With Kalluri as the Bastar police chief, former mem-

bers of the banned Salwa Judum have formed a “VikasSangharsh Samiti” (VSS) termed as Salwa Judum 2, led

by Chavindra Karma, son of Mahendra Karma, the Con-gress leader who played the main role in organising

Salwa Judum in 2005 and was killed by the Maoists in

2013.

When national media started reporting on it, Kallurisaid: “When we speak to the Maoists or their supporters

and NGO intellectuals about the killings carried out by

the Maoists, they ask you to look into the history of political vacuum. The Maoists have more supporters

than opponents. The VSS is an effort to fill that vacuum,

but the national media termed it as Judum 2. This fightdoes not mean killing and raping. It’s a big initiative. Themedia from outside is hell-bent on defaming us. My

personal opinion is that the VSS is not wrong.”

At a press conference organised outside the house of Mahendra Karma, Kalluri shared his thoughts on the

group. “Even Salwa Judum was not wrong. It was also an

attempt to bring peace [to Bastar] by peaceful means.

Unless the VSS doesn’t do any wrong, they have fullrights to work here. What wrong did Salwa Judum do?

What was Salwa Judum? All the tribal people and leaders

of this area who were exploited got together against

Maoist exploitation. Outsider Maoists are coming hereand exploiting people. The people of Bastar never asked

for Maoism. When the case on Salwa Judum was going

on in the Supreme Court, our people could not presentour case properly. I wasn’t posted in Bastar then. But if

someone goes against the VSS in the court now, I will

answer.”Reacting to the eviction of JagLAG, Kalluri said in a

press conference in Raipur: “I am not calling them

Maoists but if you verify the jail records, just see how many times they [JagLAG]have gone to meet people and

who the people they met were. The local people of Bastar

were agitated over [JagLAG] and the law and ordersituation could have been threatened.” When askedabout the eviction of Malini Subramaniam, he said,

“There is the PLGA [People’s Liberation Guerilla Army]

and there is also an overground Maoist structure. I am beating their PLGA inside the forest, so why should I

worry about Malini Subramaniam and JagLAG?”

Kalluri controls everything in Bastar now, from the

administration to the Police Department, and has beeninvolved in confrontations with almost every human

rights activist and journalist in Bastar in the last six

months. He shares a good rapport with all former Salwa Judum leaders, including P. Vijay, Sattar Ali, Madhukar

Rao and the family members of Mahendra Karma.

Officers who had been critical of him were removed

from the anti-naxal wing of Chhattisgarhone by one. The

A F I L E photograph of Mahendra Karma, the Congressleader who played the main role in organising SalwaJudum in 2005. He was killed by the Maoists in 2013.(Below) His son, Chavindra Karma, with his bodyguards.He is the leader of the Vikas Sangharsh Samiti, formed bymembers of the banned Salwa Judum.

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list includes former Anti Naxal Operation (ANO) I.G.Deepanshu Kabra, former ANO Additional Director

General R.K. Vij and former Bastar Superintendent of

Police Ajay Yadav. Another pet project of Kalluri is theSEM. According to the Editors Guild of India’s recent

fact-finding report from Bastar, the SEM is an informal

but controversial organisation in Jagdalpur.

The report says: “The administration calls it a citi-zen’s forum and claims that people from all walks of life

are members of this organisation. The Collector of Jag-dalpur, Amit Kataria, said that many religious orga-

nisations are also part of it and they are against theMaoists. But many journalists call it the urban version of

Salwa Judum. They, however, did not want to oppose it

openly. They said off the record that the Manch is spon-sored by the police and it takes its orders from the police

headquarters. The fact-finding team met one of the coor-

dinators of this organisation, Subba Rao, to understandthe working of the SEM. He introduced himself as editor

of two dailies, one morning and the other published in

the evening. When asked whether his main occupation is

journalism, Subba Rao was candid enough to explainthat he is basically a civil contractor and he is working on

some government contracts. The fact-finding team met

more than a dozen journalists in Jagdalpur, but he wasthe only (so-called) journalist who claimed that he had

never experienced any pressure from the administration.

His statements about the arrested journalists were the

same as the administrations. He termed Santosh Yadav and Somaru Nag as informers for the Maoists. He said

that what Malini Subramaniam was reporting was very

biased and was glorifying Maoists and painting a pictureof the police as exploiters. He denied that SEM was

behind the attack at Malini’s residence.”

The main focus of Salwa Judum was on evicting

people from their villages to clear the land for projects.Now a different policy is being applied. Entire villages are

asked to come to the police station for some programme

or the other and a propaganda is made out of “large-scaleMaoist surrenders”.

Since Kalluri took over as Bastar I.G., more than 700

“Maoists” have been shown as surrendered Maoists. Butmost of them have gone back to their villages in the

interior parts of Bastar and are living in fear of the

Maoists. Many are migrating to neighbouring States. Therule is clear: “If you are not with the police then you are a Maoist.” Unlike in the time of Salwa Judum, when people

were forced to join rehabilitation camps, an atmosphere

is being created in Bastar to force people to give up theirland and migrate to other parts. Huge claims are made

about construction of roads and other infrastructure, but

extremely slow development can be witnessed on the

ground, with unaccountable funds shown as having beenspent on Bastar.

According to a senior editor of a Hindi daily in the

State, Kalluri’s openness to willingly accept all the nega-

tive publicity is beneficial for the government. Kalluriopenly tells people that he has been “directly appointed”

by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and enjoys the full

backing of National Security Adviser (NSA) Ajit Doval.But the fact is that his own Police Department is against

him. “Three powerful bureaucrats, Home Secretary

B.V.R. Subramaniam, Chief Secretary Vivek Dhand andDirector General of Police A.N. Upadhyay, are shielding

him for their own benefit. These three have managed to

influence the Chief Minister about the great work Kalluri

is doing in Bastar. The Chief Minister has been told thatKalluri is being unfairly targeted because he is going after

the Maoists. But if you look at the Maoist insurgency inthe national context, it is losing its sheen in every Stateand not just Chhattisgarh,” said the senior editor, re-

questing anonymity.

Despite having his entire department against him,

Kalluri is thriving in Bastar because no other I.G. wantsthe posting. According to an I.G.-level officer posted in

Chhattisgarh, Kalluri is more active against people like

Soni Sori and against JagLAG than in carrying out anti-Maoist operations. The recent Maoist attack on a Central

Reserve Police Force (CRPF) team in a civil locality of

Dantewada district of Bastar, which resulted in the kill-

ing of seven CRPF men, puts a big question mark onKalluri’s claims of controlling and confining Maoists to a

relatively small area.

According to a bureaucrat, the Chief Minister willfind it difficult to continue with Kalluri for a long time.

“The State is one of the financially better-managed ones

in India. There have been no communal incidents sincethe formation of the State. Except the Maoist insurgency

in Bastar, Chhattisgarh is perceived to be a start-up-and

investor-friendly State. However, the government of the

day can’t afford to have negative publicity for a longtime,” he said. But a senior leader from Bastar, who is no

more active in politics, said: “Officers will come and go,

but what about some monsters who have been set freenow? Can they be controlled even after those who created

them leave Bastar for good?”

BELA BHATIA , a social activist and researcher, who

was told to leave Bastar by members of a vigilante group

and policemen.

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19 F R O N T L I N E . A P R I L 2 9 , 2 0 1 6

LIKE on any other Sunday, on March 6, Pastor An-

kush Bariyekar was preaching from the pulpit of the

Pentecostal church in Kachna, six kilometres from

Raipur, the State capital. Suddenly, 30 to 35 men wearing saffron scarves barged in, chanting “Jai Shri

Ram”. They proceeded to break all the furniture and

musical instruments and took special care to destroy the pulpit. They did not speak to anybody but system-

atically went around beating up and terrorising the

gathering of around 50 worshippers. As frantic calls

went out for help and a group of men along with thepolice arrived, the mob fled, leaving behind three

bikes. A mobile phone video of the men vandalising

the church was picked up by the national media and itcreated pressure on the police to act, resulting in the

arrest of 17 men.But slowly, attempts were made to give a different

colour to the issue by terming it one of land dispute,according to Pastor Ankush. “The entire village is built

on government land and it has some temples too. If the

issue is indeed of illegal occupancy of governmentland, then the Nagar Nigam should first stop taking

taxes from us and then go about it in a proper manner,”

he told Frontline. That a case was filed against the vandals was itself a rarity, according to him. Last year,about 40 places of worship of Christians were at-

tacked, but the police did not take any action, he said.

Usually, when such attacks were reported, counter-cases were slapped against the Christians, with charg-

es of tampering with the Adivasi culture and forced

religious conversions under Section 129 (G) of the

Chhattisgarh Panchayat Raj Act. A month before theattack on the church in Kachna, a Methodist church in

Korba was attacked in a similar fashion, but there was

no follow-up action by the police. Around the same time, two pastors returning after

conducting a prayer meeting in Dhamtari were beaten

up by a gang of goons and then arrested under Section

129 (G). Scores of pastors have been arrested on flimsy

grounds like this. V.N. Prasad Rao, State coordinatorof the Chhattisgarh Christian Fellowship, said that

persecution of their community was not new but theprecision with which the Bharatiya Janata Party gov-

ernment went about spreading hatred against the mi-

norities was chilling. “The saffron brigade under

government sponsorship has become emboldenedand are a law unto themselves. The government is

using the naxal bogey to finish off Adivasis in Bastar

and anybody else who does not belong to their ideol-ogy,” he said.

Last year, close to 50 gram sabhas in Bastar, alleg-

edly egged on by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP),passed resolutions which stipulated that no other reli-

gion except Hinduism, especially Christianity, can be

practised in those areas. Pra-

sad Rao countered that if themissionaries’ work was forced

religious conversion, so was

the work of the Bajrang Dal,

the Shiv Sena and the VHPcadre, all of whom have been

active in the region for 15 years

or more. “Adivasis are Dravi-dians and have their own dei-

ties, but the VHP says that

Adivasis are Hindus and

brands their deities as avatarsof Hindu gods and goddesses.

Over the years, the Adivasi god

Buda Deva has become an ava-tar of Siva. The madar drum of the Adivasis is being

replaced with manjeera and dholak. The BhagavadGita and Hanuman chalisa are translated into indige-nous languages and distributed amongst Adivasis. Sois that not forced conversion?” he asked.

Several cases of economic and social boycott of

Christians have been reported. In 2013, the People’sUnion for Civil Liberties(PUCL), the All India Secular

Forum and the Chhattisgarh Christian Fellowship re-

corded testimonies of communal tension in various

places in Chhattisgarh. Relatives of Christians in thesame village were asked to excommunicate them or

face dire consequences themselves.

According to the PUCL, in the village of SonaiDongri, when houses were ransacked and symbols of

Christianity attacked, people who complained at a

public hearing were told by Vibha Rao, head of theChhattisgarh’s Women’s Commission: “You have

changed your religion and society and yet you contin-

ue to live amongst these people, so this is bound to

happen.” In Chirmiri, a case has been going on againstthe principal of a Christian girls’ residential hostel.

“New angles are being added to the case at each stage.

The truth is that there is a Saraswati Shishu Mandirnext door,and if our hostel is shut down, it will benefit

that institution. The reason is never purely religious,”said Father A.P. Joshi, legal adviser to the Raipur

Catholic diocese. In 2014, the PUCL wrote to theNational Minorities Commission requesting interven-

tion in the repeated attacks on the Christian commu-

nity in Madhota village.“Another issue which has taken a communal col-

our is misuse of the State cow slaughter law. In Rai-

garh, when cattle were electrocuted along the railway

line and members of the Dalit community were sum-moned by the Railway authorities to remove them,

Hindutva organisations got these Dalits arrested un-

der false claims of cow slaughter,” says a PUCL state-ment.

Divya Trivedi

V.N. PRASAD RAO,

State coordinator of

the Chhattisgarh

Christian Fellowship.

D

I V Y A T

R

I V E D

I

Persecuted minority

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F R O N T L I N E . A P R I L 2 9 , 2 0 1 6 20

KAMAL SHUKLA, EDITOR OF THE WEEKLY

newspaper Bhumkal Samachar, apologised for being a few hours late and said: “ Bas jaan bachake aa raha hun” (I just escaped with my life). En route to Raipur from

Dantewada, he was informed by “well-wishers”that some

people planned to gherao him in Jagdalpur and wasadvised to either change cars or change the route.

Anywhere else, this kind of threat might sound fanci-

ful but not in undivided Bastar, a conflict zone where it is

routine. The ability to deal with intimidation tactics and

live under constant vigil seems to be a prerequisite for journalists to work here. “There are guns on the ready on

both sides, and journalists who stand in the middle are in

the direct line of fire,” said Shukla. The intimidationtactics of the state, however, far surpassed those of the

Maoists, said a local journalist. Shukla, who is also the

general secretary of the Patrakar Suraksha Kanoon Sany-

ukta Sangharsh Samiti (Joint Committee to Struggle and

No news is bad news As the conflict between the state and the Maoists escalates, journalists get

caught in the crossfire and truth becomes a casualty. BY DIVYA TRIVEDI

COVER STORY

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21 F R O N T L I N E . A P R I L 2 9 , 2 0 1 6

Demand Law for Protection of Journalists), for instance,has been tailed, and threatened by senior police officers

with jail on charges of being a naxal conduit, and has hadhis phone tapped. He has not been able to publish hisnewspaper for months.

In the past eight months, four journalists have been

arrested, two killed in cold blood, and several framed infalse cases. Many families have been harassed. Several

journalists have been forced to leave the region and

scores have been driven out of the profession itself by the

high risk factor.The latest in a series of incidents involving journalists

is the arrest of 31-year-old Prabhat Singh on March 22 in

Dantewada under Sections 67, 67(A) and 292 of theInformation Technology Act for allegedly “posting an

obscene and objectionable message” on the WhatsApp

group “Bastar News”. Three other cases from the past

were dug up and he was booked for those too. One

pertained to the alleged extortion of Rs.20 from villagers

for making Aadhaar cards. Another was based on a com-

plaint filed by the principal of a school in Geedam thatPrabhat Singh was investigating for allegedly allowing

large-scale cheating in examinations.

Colleagues in the field, however, say that PrabhatSingh is being victimised for asking Inspector General

S.R.P. Kalluri uncomfortable questions at a press meetabout an encounter killing in Modenar. Kalluri had re-

portedly said then: “Tumhari kundali mere paas hai,sudhar jao [Your horoscope is with me, you better mend your ways].” Subsequently, the Patrika newspaper car-ried a full page report on its front page challenging thepolice version of the events in Modenar. Prabhat Singh

was picked up by policemen in plainclothes and illegally

detained overnight at Parpa police station, where he was

allegedly physically and verbally abused. A few days later,a co-accused in the Geedam school case, Deepak Jaiswal,

a reporter with Dainik Daindini, was also arrested out-

side the court premises while he was waiting with hislawyer to file for anticipatory bail. Both their bail pleas

were rejected and they were sent to judicial custody.

Journalists in Chhattisgarh are extremely vulnerable

since most of them are stringers working in a conflictzone. It is a common practice to hire journalists for paltry

salaries on monthly contracts, and they do not enjoy

benefits like Employees’ State Insurance (ESI) or Provi-dent Fund. Reporters are used as messengers, and news

organisations often disown them at the slightest hint of

liability. Since their salaries are low, they are often forced

to undertake other jobs for sustenance, such as working

as an Aadhaar officer, a shopkeeper, or a contractor forthe State administration. There have been instances of

journalists accepting money and other incentives forsuppressing news. Those who are honest and independ-

A D E M O N S T R A T I O N demanding the removal of the

Inspector General, Bastar.

B Y

S P E C I A L

A R R A N G E M E N T

J O U R N A L I S T S protesting at the spot where

Sai Reddy was killed in Basaguda in Chhattisgarh, in

December 2013.

S U V O J I T B A G C H I

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F R O N T L I N E . A P R I L 2 9 , 2 0 1 6 22

MANISH KUNJAM is busy working out strate-

gies with his Communi-

st Party of India (CPI)

comrades against the

backdrop of the settingsun in Raipur. His re-

laxed demeanour belieshis predicament. This

two-time Member of the

Legislative Assembly

from Sukma in the southBastar region of Chhat-

tisgarh, considered to be a Maoist stronghold, is no

novice to a conflict situation. According to Kun- jam, in February, the police tried to instigate the

naxalites against him and other CPI members in a

bid to have them killed “so that there is no Adivasileft to speak of Jal-Jangal-Jameen in Bastar”. Asthe president of the All India Adivasi Mahasabha,

Kunjam has been voicingthe concerns of the tribal

people caught in the crossfire in the state-Maoistconflict. Although he weighs his words as he fears

that a slip of the tonguecan prove fatal, he does not

mince words in criticising the State government,the Maoists and corporate houses for the plunder

of the region’s natural resources. In 2005, a fact-

finding mission of the CPI exposed the atrocities

committed by the civil militia Salwa Judum, mo-

bilised for counter-insurgency operations. In2007, Kunjam, along with others, petitioned

against the Salwa Judum. This resulted in theSupreme Court ordering the disbanding of the

militia in 2011. Kunjambelongs to the Gondi Koya

tribe. Excerpts from an interview he gave

Frontline:

The CPI had a strong foothold in these areas.

If you look at the state of the Communist parties in

the country today, on the basis of media reports as well as the enthusiasm they exude, they have be-

come weak, and that is true of their position in

Chhattisgarh as well. Although the CPI’s member-ship increased, its pockets of strength weakened

MANI SH KUNJAM.

D I V Y A

T R I V E D I

‘Our troubles

are endless’

ent find themselves targeted by both state and non-stateplayers.

Last year, Santosh Yadav and Somaru Nag were ac-

cused of being Maoist sympathisers and arrested underthe draconian Special Public Security Act, 2005, in sep-

arate cases. A stringer with Dainik Navbharat and Dai-nik Chhattisgarh, Santosh Yadav supplemented his

meagre monthly income by running a photocopy shop.Being the first reporter on the scene of a crime might be a

feather in the cap of journalists elsewhere, but not in

Chhattisgarh. As a resident of Darbha, he was the firstreporter to reach the valley where Salwa Judum founder

Mahendra Karma was killed in a bloody ambush by the

Maoists in 2013. Ever since, he has been harassed by

policemen to turn informer, according to a representa-tion made to the National Human Rights Commission by

the human rights organisation Alert India.

It is not unusual for the police to involve journalists inanti-naxalite operations. For example, before entering a

village, they would ask a reporter to go and check if any naxalites were present. If a jawan is killed, a reporter is

asked to bring the body from the village in his car. Thisexposes the reporter to extreme danger from the Maoists,

who have killed journalists in the past, accusing them of

being police informers. Santosh Yadav refused to getinvolved in these ways. For two years, he was harassed,

kept in custody for days and even stripped naked and

beaten. When Santosh told a police officer that he wouldexpose the fake surrenders arranged by them in a nearby

village, it was the last

straw. Within minutes of

making that statement, he was picked up by the police

and three days later, Kal-

luri gave a press statementsaying that Santosh was a

hard-core naxalite. Subse-

quently, his name was

added to a list of 18 un-known persons accused in

an old case where a special

police officer was killed.Somaru Nag, a strin-

ger-cum-newspaper agentfor Rajasthan Patrika, was similarly charged with acting as a lookout while a group burnt a crusher plant in Chote Kadma. Villagers

often approached him for help and he would comply, but

the police warned him to not do so. Then there is RajeshSahu, against whom four cases have been registered. He

used to actively investigate and report on corruption

cases in the State. Manish Soni used to be a Zee News

stringer, but the moment Zee News removed him, a complaint was filed against him for the reporting he had

done for the channel, said Kamal Shukla.

For the media in Bastar, 2013 may have been the worst year, when Nemichand Jain and Sai Reddy, both

veterans with 20 years’ experience, were killed by the

Maoists. Jain was 43 and freelanced for the Hindi dailies

Hari Bhoomi, Nayi Duniya and Dainik Bhaskar . He wasaccused of being a police informer. His colleagues deny

the accusation. According to a statement on the Commit-

tee to Protect Journalists’ website, Jain’s social activismmay have led to his murder. “A week before his death,

Jain had been instrumental in helping free an individual

PRABHAT SI NGH, the

journalist who was jailed.

B Y S P E C I A L

A R R A N G E M

E N T

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23 F R O N T L I N E . A P R I L 2 9 , 2 0 1 6

after the Jan Jagran Abhiyan was started in the 1990s.

Today, the CPI is unable to win an election in Bastar, a

region where it was once strong. If you look at the areas where the Salwa Judum used to be active, the Maoists

have gained considerably in Bastar, Bijapur and Sukma

[districts]. We are trying to gain lost ground. We be-

lieve in democracy and not the gun as is obvious fromour political participation, but yet we are accused of

being Maoist sympathisers. Had that been the case, we

would have won election after election with their sup-port. The Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP] and the Con-

gress have always won from the region and the reasonfor this has been the subject of media debate. Despite

the plain truth, the police brand us as naxalite sympa-thisers, spy on us and disrupt our rallies. They sneak

into our programmes and raise slogans that can land us

in trouble. The jails are packed with people from politi-cal parties. Many CPI cadres have been accused of

naxalite activities. The BJP, with the help of the police,

is trying to weaken the CPI politically because inside

Bastar, the CPI is the only party fighting for the rights of Adivasis. We protested against the Salwa Judum and

got it banned. We protested against Tata and Essar and

they were compelled to flee from the region. They wantto loot the resources of Bastar but have realised that it

will be difficult to do so as long as the CPI is around.

According to them, the naxalites are already weak. So,

once they take care of the CPI, the oppressed andabused Adivasis will be forced to run, leaving their land

for the Tatas, Jindals, Essars and Adanis. Once the

Adivasis leave, it will be a cakewalk for these corporates,and even the Congress will support them obliquely in

this.

What do you think of the situation in Bastar?

The presence of paramilitary forces has increased sub-stantially in Bastar and there are several front orga-

nisations. I will not go into whether they are Salwa Judum II or III, but a big campaign is under way using

surrendered Maoists and local boys. Earlier, things

were operated through the barrel of the gun. Themodusoperandi has changed now. There are also fake surren-ders though the police, and the government will deny it

in public. No one can deny that Bastar has turned into a

police state. Typically, the head of a district is theCollector, but it is fair to say this is not the case in

Bastar. Here, the head of the police is

frontline 29 april 2016

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