Varavara Rao Presented in the Court Today in the 2005 Case of Pavagada Attack

The Karnataka Police, yesterday on July 3, 2019 took, Varvara Rao, the Telugu writer and activist, into their custody from the Yerawada jail, Pune, reported the Hindu. According to this report, Rao has been taken into custody in connection with the 2005, allegedly a naxal attack in Pavagada taluk of Kolar district. The poet has been in jail ever since he was arrested in connection with the Elgar Parishad case, in 2018. He was produced before the Judicial Magistrate First Class  Court (JMFC) of Pavagada, today. However it is not only Mr Rao who has been accused of being part of the allegedly a naxal attack on February 10, 2005, wherein a Karnataka State Reserve Police (KSRP) camp in Pavagada, Tumakuru district, was attacked resulting in killings of seven including six KSRP personnel. Gaddar a well known poet and an activist from Telangana is also accused in the case.

The Karnataka police had arrested 65 people relating to the case and 22 of them were set free by the Court. According to Scroll.in the case was registered at the Thirumani Police Station in Pavagada in Tumkur district of Karnataka. The case was registered under Sections 302 (murder), 307 (attempt to murder) of the Indian Penal Code and sections of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and Explosives Act.

The story of the Pavagada attack is an archetype of the disinterest shown by the state governments in handling the issues of Adivasi lands. Those who are fighting for their rights are seen as a problem and as in the case of Saket Rajan, brutally shot dead. It is not only “naxals” who are attacked and killed, but anybody who writes or speaks against the state are attacked, as in the case of Varavara Rao and Gaddar.

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Pavagada attack

The attack on the KSRP camp is seen as a retaliation of the naxals for the encounter in which naxal leader Saketh Rajan was shot dead in Chikkamagaluru. The Hindu on February 11, 2019 reported, “200 naxalites, which included about 50 women,attacked a KSRP camp in a school at Venkat Kammanahalli in Pavagada taluk of Tumkur district, which borders with Andhra Pradesh, late on Thursday night. The attack comes within days of the police shooting dead a top naxalite leader, Saketh Rajan, and his associate in Chikmagalur district.”

Saketh Rajan, was a scholar and a professor was the State secretary of the CPI (Maoist). He is widely remembered as a fearless activist who fought against emergency and as a brilliant student. For the state however, he was just someone who was anti-establishment and a naxalite. As late journalist Gauri Lankesh wrote, Saket and his fellowmen and fellow women were not some ragtag gang of misguided youth, but a political party that had taken up the cause of tribals in the Kudremukh National Park. In Fact the then Government of Karnataka had openly recognised as a socio-economic problem and it was ready to hold talks with them about the rights of adivasis. However the police shot him and one of his comrades down in Chikmagalur.

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Lankesh commenting on the Pavagada attack said, this is what was feared will happen. To avoid such confrontation between the police and the naxalites, Citizens Initiative for Peace was formed and Lankesh was also instrumental in its formation. She in fact had mediated between the Vidhana Soudha and Naxals and was successful in making a peace talk possible, however the CIP saw its end with Saket’s killing.

Gauri wrote, “Our intention was to create a climate where the government and the Naxals could initiate talks in the larger context of people’s longstanding needs and development issues. It is important to note that the Adivasis had been fighting against their eviction in the name of a national park and for their traditional rights. But successive governments had not addressed them. While we appealed to the Naxals to lay down arms, we also appealed to the government to cease combing operations as the first step towards holding talks. We were worried that the police, who had killed two women Naxals in November 2003, would end up killing more. If that happened, there would certainly be a Naxal backlash. Saket’s death triggered what we had feared for so long.”

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Varavara Rao and Gaddar in the Case

Mr. Rao’s wife P. Hemalatha speaking to the Hindu in June, when the police had said the High Court of Karnataka that both Rao and Gaddar were named in the chargesheets, had said, “ his arrest in a case where all the rest of the accused were acquitted, only smelt of a collusion of agencies to harass him further to extend his jail stay.” Both Varavara Rao and Gaddar were part of protests against the Saket Rajan’s encounter. Was this enough to make the connections? Today’s hearing at the Court would let out the evidence that the police has, to support Rao’s arrest.

After fourteen years, and just a few months following the arrest of Varavara Rao along with four other activists — Gautam Navlakha, Sudha Bhardwaj, Arun Ferreira and Vernon Gonsalves which had given rise to a new term, “Urban Naxal,” the taking into custody of Rao by the Karnataka police, resounds Hemalatha’s concern, mentioned above. Is it a tactic to extend his jail stay?

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