Chhattisgarh State Intimidates Researchers

When a bullet is fired in a remote village of Bastar its echo doesn’t reach the busy streets of New Delhi. It travels for a while in the picturesque jungles only to fail at the task of narrating the pain of the person whose flesh it had torn and had entered their body to silence them forever. The bullet may have been released from either a police gun provided by the State or through the nozzle of a Maoist’s rifle; either way it has taken the life of an innocent. All this would go unrecorded if not for a few brave journalists who literally gamble their lives to report these incidents; to capture in words: the colour, the smell, the pleas, and the agony of the blood which is spilt without remorse. And then there are also those who empathize with the situation of these tribal communities and try to seek out the truth and fight relentlessly for the basic human rights of these adivasis.

In a similar attempt, a Fact Finding committee had visited Bastar in May 2016. In its report, which was widely circulated over the internet, the team called for greater attention to the plight of ordinary citizens caught in the crossfire between the Maoists and state-sponsored vigilantes.

This did not go down well with the Chhattisgarh police and they registered a FIR on 5th of November, 2016 implicating six members of the Fact Finding committee in a murder case. The members, who are charged in the FIR, are Nandini Sundar and Archana Prasad, professors at Delhi University and the Jawaharlal Nehru University, respectively, Vineet Tiwari of the Joshi Adhikari Foundation, Sanjay Parate, state secretary of the CPI(M) and Manju Kawasi of the CPI, a village sarpanch from Sukma district. The victim was Samnath Baghel, who was reportedly the head of the village’s vigilante group deployed by the Chhattisgarh police.

The members who are named in the FIR were nowhere near the victim at time of his death. The FIR itself indicates that there is absolutely no connection between his murder and these human rights defenders. In the FIR, the wife of the deceased has claimed that her husband was killed by Maoists, who said that he was being punished for not following the directives of a fact-finding committee lead by Dr. Sundar. How does this call for implication of the members of the fact finding committee?
However, in the latest reports from NDTV, wife of the victim claims she gave no names.This act of vengeance by Chhattisgarh police has been condemned by many organizations and people. Nandini Sundar has published a fact-sheet on her blog which gives the background to this false FIR.

SAHMAT has issued a statement condemning the action, “The charges brought by the Chhattisgarh police are a transparent effort to intimidate independent civic initiatives that focus public attention particularly on the problems of the state’s adivasi communities. Professors Nandini Sundar and Archana Prasad who have long had a research commitment in this area, have often been subject to intrusive surveillance and intimidation on their visits to the Bastar region.”

SAHMAT has also stated the pretext of this action by Chhattisgarh police, “We deplore the atmosphere of intolerance for the advocacy of human rights, typified by the burning an effigy of well-known activists a fortnight back, by members of the police force. This action followed a finding by the Central Bureau of Investigation that members of the police force – and the so-called volunteers or “special police officers” they recruited – were responsible for an incident of arson in Tadmedla village of Sukma district, in which 160 dwellings were burnt. The incident was blamed on Maoist insurgents but the CBI finding of police culpability came after an investigation ordered by the High Court.”

People’s Union for Civil Liberties has issued a statement putting this FIR in the context of the ongoing atrocities inflicted upon the innocent villagers by the police itself and has demanded that “The Chhattisgarh Police should immediately stop any coercive action and desist from arresting Prof. Nandini Sundar, Professor Archana Prasad, Vineet Tiwari, Sanjay Parate, and other persons who were part of the Fact Finding Team in May, 2016 based on the trumped up FIR, Investigation of the murder case in (Cr. No. 27/2016 PS Tongpal dated 5.11.2016) be immediately handed over to a central, independent investigating agency, such as the CBI, NHRC should also take note of the repeated subversions of the criminal justice system by the Chhattisgarh Police, to implicate innocent persons for political ends and their continued violation of fundamental rights and human rights of tribals and others in Bastar area in particular and order a Full fledged Enquiry, disciplinary and criminal action should be initiated against all police officials, from the SHO to the senior-most IG, who have been involved in contriving this FIR and malevolently subverting the law of the land in order to incriminate Prof Sundar and other members of her team.”

This murder case should be investigated properly and Chhattisgarh police should be invested in how to capture the culprits rather than harassing the advocates of human rights.