Fake encounters in Kandhamal

The human cost of fake encounters

John Dayal

A bullet kills a man, shatters a family, and adds to the triumphal statistics of a government totaling up the number of “Maoists” it has eliminated in its “Red Corridor” extending from the borers of Nepal to deep into Andhra Pradesh in south India.

The tragedy is compounded as Central and State governments pretend deafness when civil society challenges the “fake encounter”, a euphemism for cold blooded extra judicial execution by the armed police, and the country’s much wonted judicial system cannot intervene to examine the circumstances in which a bunch of young men me their death in such a brutal manner.

This is one such story, narrated by the brother of one of those killed, and a harried activist who sees his own son abducted by the police soon after he cries for justice for the dead innocents. It is also the frustration of national civil society activists and specially those of Orissa who have failed to rouse the conscience of chief ministers, governors and heads of various commissions dealing with human rights issues.

As news reports curtly detailed one morning, five men, described as Maoists, were shot dead in an encounter with the security forces in Gajapati district of Odisha on November 14, 2012. They were identified as  Aiba Padra, 35 years of age, of Bujuli village in Gadhapur panchayat, Shyamson Majhi, 50, of Bhingiriguda in Saramuli panchayat, Ghasiram Bagsingh, 33, of Mardhipanka village, Saramuli panchayat and Sanathan Mallick, 27, of Gaheju village in Hatimunda panchayat. All four villages are in Daringbadi block of Kandhamal district in the jurisdiction of the Brahmanigaon police station.

Dandapani Mohanty,  one of interlocutors along with Prof. Hargopal and Prof. R.S. Rao during the Government and Maoists’ peace talk process when Vineel Krishna, the then Malkangiri Collector, was abducted by Maoists, said the killings took place even as negotiations with the director general of police over implementation of  the past agreement were still under way.

On 30^th November, 2012, various civil rights organizations organized a demonstration and dharna in front of Odisha Assembly with the widows of the dead men, demanding a judiciary enquiry into the incident. The chief minister refused to meet the delegation.

Instead, police abducted Mohanty’s son. in a letter to the chief minister, Mohanty said “in a surprising move, on 5^th December, 2012, at the time around 10 am, when my only son Sangram Mohanty, an engineer and government contractor,  was returning from the garage after dealing with repair works of our trucks, the police in civil dress forcefully kidnapped him from Berhampur. In afternoon I knew from various TV channels that my son was arrested by police from Kamalapur of Mohana block area allegedly with arms and ammunitions and later forwarded to R. Udaygiri jail at 2 o’clock night. Though our family members and advocate tried to meet him police did not allow them at both Mohana Police Station and R. Udaygiri jail.”

Human rights activist VS Krishna and writer and social activist Deba Ranjan Sarangi  who led a fact-finding mission said “On the basis of our enquiries we state emphatically that all five of the deceased are not armed Maoist cadre but civilians. They did not die in an encounter but were murdered by the police. The version of the police that a combing party of the Special Operations Group and District Voluntary Force were fired upon on the forenoon of November 14 by Maoists in the Baliguda forest area of Gobindapur panchayat (on the Gajapati-Ganjam border) in the jurisdiction of the Mohana police station following which they returned the fire in self-defense resulting in the death of 5 Maoists is nothing but a blatant falsehood.”

Their enquiries found all five killed were civilians and unarmed. They were farmers who were leading completely over-ground lives. While three of them, Aiba Padra, Shyamson Majhi and Sanatan Mallick were adivasis of the Kondh tribe, Ghasiram Bagsingh and Laxmi Kanta Nayak were Scheduled Castes belonging to the Pano community. Ghasiram Bagsingh, Shyamson Majhi and Aiba Padra were also social activists.

Aiba Padra of Bujuli had some land on which he raised ginger and turmeric. His wife Ranjita is an anganwadi worker in the village and they have a 6-year-old son who studies at the Good Shepherd School in Brahmanigaon. Aiba was employed with an NGO Orissa Health and Medical Research Institute for which he was filling in details of the government’s socio-economic and caste census. He was, according to residents of the village, quite concerned about the development of the area. According to Ranjita, Aiba was driving her and their son on his motorbike from Brahmanigaon on November 12 when he said that there was some work he had to attend on and would be back the next day. He dropped them off en-route Bujuli and that was the last she saw him alive.

Shyamson Majhi of Bhingiriguda was a much-respected man. He was president, since 2004, of a local committee formed by the people and was quite active in issues like exposing panchayat raj corruption and laying of roads to remote villages. He had unsuccessfully contested for the Saramuli sarpanch’s post in 2006. On November 13, Shyamson asked his brother Judhistir, a government teacher, for his motorcycle saying he had to go to Daringbadi to seek legal help for 11 of their associates who were being implicated in a false case by Karma Patmajhi and their associates. That was the last his wife Sikko Alu Majhi saw him. The couple has two sons, one of who is mentally challenged.

Sanatan Mallick of Gaheju was a farmer who raised ginger and paddy. He was also a pastor his village church. He and his wife Mamita, an anganwadi helper, also ran a small kirana shop in the village. They have two daughters. According to the village residents, he was a good man and of a helpful nature. He would often speak in terms of doing the right thing. The last time Mamita saw him alive was on November 13^th when he left home in the morning saying he would return the next day.”

Ghasiram Bagsingh of Mardhipanka was by all accounts an exceptionally dynamic activist. He was elected panchayat samiti member in the 2006 polls and was quite well known in the area. Apart from some farming, he also did small construction contracts. He was the leader of the anti-corruption crusade in the panchayat that resulted in the sarpanch getting arrested. He, along with people like Shyamson Majhi took out an impressive rally at Daringbadi on October 12 seeking action against not just the sarpanch but also all those who were involved in the rice misappropriation and other illegalities. Ghasiram was driving the bike with Shyamson pillion riding on November 13th when they left for Daringbadi. This is the last seen of both of them alive.

How the deaths of these men, caught in the political crossfire between the government and the Maoist, have impacted their families is best told in the words of Ghasiram’s only brother Pramod. Pramod is a Catholic scholar, currently   a member of the community of Silesians of Don Bosco, studying philosophy in Karunapuram Warangal, Andhra Pradesh.

In a letter to some friends, he said “Karma Majhi, the Sarpanch of our panchayat is the dealer who sells ration rice to the locality. He is supposed to give to the people whatever comes from the Government but in reality he is selling away secretly the store and telling the innocent people no stock. It has been taking place number of times. People in their innocence went to my brother Ghasiram Bagsingh, a well-known person in the locality who always fought for justice. He was also a member of Daringbadi Block  council. Together with the people my brother went to police station to fail a case against the Sarpanch for cheating the people. The police responded immediately and arrested him. Later they had a rally in the block in the presence of B.D.O and Tahsildar.

“The sarpanch got bail complained to the Naxalites about my brother and four other innocent men.  The Maoists gave a letter to my brother telling him to come for meeting in the forest near Baliguda. The nature of the Naxalites of this place is that nobody should know what is happening in the place other than the people concerned. If at all the news is leaked they would come and kill the person responsible.

“The sarpanch who informed the Maoists, also informed the police  who went to the place where meeting is conducted and shot all five.  The question is whether they were shot on their way to the meeting spot or on their return journey or just called and shot. These questions remain unanswered. The whole incident was arranged by the sarpanch.

“My brother Ghasiram Bagsingh was married to Laxmi and had four children, two boys and two girls studying in different hostels aging from 9 to 3 years. His wife is housewife. Now I am in a dilemma what to do about them. I am in the seminary. I am only male at home. I have five sisters of whom two are married and three are studying in hostels. My family needs financial support very badly. We have filled case in the high court for the compensation and to get justice done for the family. So far nothing has happened.”

The media has not bothered about this family, or about the other five.

The government remains silent.

Civil society has also quietened down, frustrated as its efforts go unheeded,  and afraid they too may be targeted like Mohanty.

[First published in Indian Currents 10 Feb 2013]

In Kandhamal, Maoist violence adds a new dimension to recovery

Kandhamal Update One in the Season of Advent 9dec10

Maoist violence delays church restoration, and the Catholic Parish of Batticola village that has vanished in thin air

John Dayal, Kandhamal, {Orissa} 8 December 2010

Sikarma Catholic parish is a blessed one – it escaped anti Christian violence both in Christmas 2007 and the 23 August to November carnage of 2008. But today it is a Parish in mourning. Five of a local Catholic Dalit and Tribal families were wiped out when an ambulance they were travelling in was blown up in a bend in the forest road on its way back from a Hospital in Behrampur some 200 kilometers at midnight on 27th November 2010. Ironically, the pregnant woman the family had taken to the hospital gave birth to a stillborn child because they had delayed too long. The tragedy was further aggravated, for among the dead was a pregnant social worker, and a three year old girl who would not stay back at home with her father. The social worker and the ambulance driver were the only one not related to the others. She had volunteered to accompany the woman in distress.

Maoists had a few days earlier shot dead a businessman and Hindutva political activist Manoj Sahoo, 35, at point blank range in the marketplace. Sahoo was a contractor and had been listed in a public handbill reportedly published by Maoists after the assassination of VHP vice president Lakshmananda Saraswati on 23rd August 2008, which triggered off a three month orgy of anti Christian violence by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh groups Bajrang Dal, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Adivasi Kalyan Parishad. Manoj was an enthusiastic local leader of that violence, according to the villagers.

In another incident three moths ago, two Christian home guards were killed by the Maoists who accused them of being police informers before slashing them with sharp weapons and then executing them with gunfire.

In the terror that now pervades the area in Brahmanigaon and Sikarma, people are afraid to come to work. According to the Parish priest of Brahmanigaon, his work of reconstructing the church burnt down on Christmas Eve in 2007 has been stalled because the contractor has chickened out.

In a black turn to the tragic story of nearby Sikarma, the Maoists reportedly apologized to the surviving members of the small well knit-clan, and have offered compensation. The surviving family members told me they would refuse the money if indeed it was given.

The Maoists had set the trap – a powerful wired anti-vehicle mine set off by a long distance switch – for a local senior police officer, who was to pass by the same route in a white vehicle, very similar to the ill-fated hospital ambulance. The policeman apparently changed his plans at the last moment. According to villagers who wish to remain anonymous, the ambulance driver too had been “warned” by unidentified persons not to travel along that route so late at night, but the family was in a hurry to reach home to collect money for the Behrampur hospital where their patient required fresh infusions of expensive blood.

The ambulance driver avoided possible Maoist “checkpoints” in the nearby Brahmanigaon area by taking a detour through the local police station and hospital before coming back to the only road to the village, and its rendezvous with tragedy. It would seem that the Maoists mistook the ambulance be the vehicle of the policeman and set off the blast. Later, they dragged the bodies of the driver and another man close to the culvert, seemingly to identify them. The women’s bodies were still far away from the shattered vehicle.

It was some days after the blast that I came to the village after passing by the twisted remains of the jeep-ambulance by the culvert. I met the family which was still in a trauma to be very coherent. The story was narrated by Sister Teresa who runs a dispensary in her convent, and Fr Dushmant, the assistant parish priest, who had helped pick up the pieces of the bodies as they lay, splattered over 500 meters in the jungle. Dushmant has himself seen violence at close quarters. He was earlier in the Kanjimendi-Nuagaon Pastoral House when it was burnt by marauding mobs in August 2008.

Fr Dushmant says they are still to find the legs of one woman, and the head of another.

Sister Teresa said she had earlier attended on the pregnant woman, Bonita, the wife of casual labour Buna Digal. She had diagnosed that the woman was carrying a fetus too large for a normal delivery. She told them to take the woman to the government hospital in Phulbani or to Behrampur. Buna waited too long. By the time his driver friend Simon Pradhan brought the hospital ambulance, rushed Bonita and her relatives to the hospital, it was too late for the unborn child. He was dead in the womb. But Bonita still needed blood, and for that, the family needed money. The ambulance was returning with the family to borrow the money.

In their twin huts in the Musina hamlet of Sikarma village close to the road, Bento Digal sits with his grand aunt Sushila Digal, who now looks older than her 60 years. Bento lost his pregnant wife Innoci and daughter Subhashi. His three year old son Pabano had remained in the village, and survived. Sushila lost her son Buna, whose wife survives in the Behrampur hospital after her still born delivery. The two unrelated good Samaritans who died were Simon Pradhan, a friendly tribal who had brought the ambulance from the hospital in Brahmanigaon where he served, and Shushanti Mallik, 30, a tribal and social worker of an NGO. The survivors do not know what the future holds for them. Senior district officers are still to visit the twin families.

… …

Batticola – The Parish that vanished


Tragic in a different manner is the story of the Catholic parish that has vanished into the unknown. Batticola parish covered the Nandigiri village which had more than six dozen worshipping families. These were devout families, and had given at least three Nuns and two Priests to the Church in recent years despite their life of abject poverty as petty famers and casual labour. One of the priests is Fr Mrityunjay, the secretary to Archbishop Raphael Cheenath and also the treasurer of the diocese. His mother and two brothers are witness to some of the worst aspects of the anti Christian violence of 2008. One of his brothers was forcibly tonsured, made to drink cow dung and urine in a religious conversion masterminded and enforced by the local Hindutva thugs.

Every single Christian house in Nandigiri was torched and destroyed in the violence. The people ran away into the forest, and then found refuge in government camps. Bu they are among the unfortunate who may never be able to go to the village of their ancestors because they have been told they would have to convert to Hinduism as a precondition to their return. The kingpin behind the violence is one Goverdhan Pradhan, who roamed free for two years before he was finally arrested in nearby Udayagiri town by police inspector Murmu.

Collector Krishan Kumar has apparently conceded that he cannot ensure the safety of the Christians back in Nandigiri nor can he persuade the local Hindus to accept their brethren back. His solution has been to found a new village ghetto several kilometers away at the foot of a mountain, just for the Christians. In a supreme irony, this village is called Shantinagar, the place of peace.

The collector has allotted 4 cents of land – four per cent of an acre – to each family to build a house. The 69 families who have shifted – 51 of them Catholic – cleared the shrub, dug the rain water trenches, and waited in tents before the houses – sterile and identical brick and steel sheet roof structures – were put up by the Believers Church in money they donated together with the little money that the collector gave. The houses cost Rs 80,000, and many of the residents now owe money to the church. Efforts are on to persuade the church to waive off the balance. The Jesuits and Mother Teresa’s sisters have provided the cots and blankets, the cooking pots and the clothes.

But there is no livelihood. The collector has allotted them the land on condition that they would let go of their claims on the old village land. But he has not allotted them any agricultural land in exchange of their fields in the village where they are now not allowed to till. This is a village where the men have no jobs of any kind. The younger lot goes to the nearby town of Udayagiri to try their luck as casual labour. They have lost much more than their livelihood. They have all but lost their dignity. And the church has lost its parish. The official parish priest now lives in far away Bhubaneswar. A priest closer by comes for Sunday prayers. Even as I was talking to them, the villagers were being persuaded by St Gabriel congregation Brother Markose, who was uniting them to build a new church-cum-community hall, so they could celebrate Christmas in a new church, and not under the very cold Kandhamal skies.

Their Christmas wish remains a return to the lost parish of Batticola in Nandigiri and to revive their old Church.