Reward-carrying Maoists or Civilians?

Malini Subramaniam

Deep inside the forests of Bastar in southern Chhattisgarh, Maoist insurgents drawn from local Adivasi communities have been locked in a low-intensity war with the state for nearly four decades. This year, Chhattisgarh police claim to have made a major breakthrough in the conflict, killing 141 Maoists in 38 encounters, higher than any annual tally seen in the past, barring 2009.

She lay on the ground with her head turned sideways, nose and mouth bloodied, eyes partially open. The dead woman in the photograph, according to a press statement of the Chhattisgarh police, was Sanni alias Sundri of Vattekal village, a member of company number six of the People’s Liberation Guerilla Army, the armed wing of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist).

The statement said she was among six Maoists killed during a gunfight between the security forces and the insurgents in the forests near Gobel village in Narayanpur district on June 7.

According to the police, she was no ordinary Maoist–she had a bounty on her head. Any security personnel who killed her was entitled to receive a reward of Rs 8 lakh from the state.

But at her home in Vattekal village, the woman’s father, Ishwar Kumeti, denied his daughter was a Maoist.

Showing her Aadhaar card and Ayushman Bharat health insurance card issued by the government, Kumeti said his daughter’s name was ManbatiKumeti, not Sanni. Most knew her by her nickname, Kaari, he said. She was 23 when she died.

Kaari’s brother Balku Kumeti, who works as a mid-day meal cook in the village’s primary school, said she was home on the morning of June 7 when news that the security forces were approaching the village set off a wave of panic. Everyone, except breast-feeding women, infants and the elderly, fled into the forest – a common response in villages falling in the Maoist-dominated areas in southern Chhattisgarh, where Adivasi villagers fear reprisals from state forces on suspicion that they are providing support to the insurgents.

While others came back to the village by the evening of June 7, Kaari did not. On June 8, the police released photographs of six bodies, which they claimed were of the Maoists killed in the encounter. Five bodies were in uniform. The sixth was not. This woman in a chequered shirt was Kaari, to her family’s shock.

“When I went to claim her body along with my father, we told the senior officers present that they had made a mistake,” said BaliramKumeti, a second brother of Kaari. “But the officers insisted she was a Maoist.” He said the Narayanpur superintendent of police told them “he will look into the matter.”

Meanwhile, police superintendent Pushkar Sharma dismissed the family’s allegation. He said all bodies had been identified by surrendered Maoists from the area who were familiar with the cadres and could be trusted to accurately identify them.

The list of the names and photographs released by the police mentioned the reward amount for each of those killed. The total came to Rs 38 lakh, with the individual bounties ranging from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 8 lakh.
“The size of the reward is based on the seniority of rank and the profile of the individual in the party,” Sharma explained.

When a Maoist surrenders to the police, he or she is given the reward as rehabilitation assistance, the superintendent said. But when a Maoist is killed in a security operation, “the reward is distributed among the team that went into the operation”. There is no reward for arresting a Maoist. “That is part of our regular duties,” he said.

Asked if this creates an incentive for the police to kill Maoists in cold blood as opposed to arresting them and bringing them to justice, Sharma said the reward is distributed among a large number of security personnel, and often the individual share comes to a negligible amount. “On paper, it may appear to be a large amount, but when shared with a large team it is a very small amount, hardly an incentive,” he said.

Bastar Inspector General of Police, PattilingamSundarraj, echoed this view. “No one makes a fortune by conducting anti-Naxal operations and neutralising Maoists,” he said. Giving rewards for successful anti-Maoist operations is an old policy, he pointed out. Besides, the money is distributed to the “core team” involved in the operation only after a committee has “scrutinised every aspect of the operation, including the medical reports and magisterial inquiry reports”.

Asked how many personnel in total had participated in the June 7 anti-Maoist operation, Narayanpur police superintendent Sharma refused to reveal the number, citing security reasons. The Inspector General, too, declined to specify how many personnel were usually part of a “core team”.

This lack of transparency is worrying.

This year, Chhattisgarh Police claims to have killed 141 Maoists in 38 encounters in the Bastar region– the highest annual tally in decades. Many of those killed had bounties on their heads. The reward money for these adds up to Rs 5.42 crore. The total amount is likely to be higher since information was not available for 10 encounters.

Have the bounties skewed the way security operations are conducted and led to questionable killings?

Rekawaya gram panchayat lies at the intersection of the three districts of Narayanpur, Bijapur and Dantewada. The Indravati River flows through the thickly forested area. Boats made of hollowed-out trees transport people across the river from Bijapur’sBhairamgarh block, barring in the summer, when it is possible to wade through its rocky, shallow parts.

This is what some of the security personnel did on May 23, as part of a security operation called “Operation Jal Shakti”.

Although Rekawaya comes under the jurisdiction of Narayanpur’sOrchha block and police station, it was Dantewada district police that took credit for the operation.

According to a press statement released by the police on May 24, eight bodies of uniformed Maoists as well as seven weapons had been recovered after the end of the operation that lasted 72 hours. The statement said some people suspected of planting explosive devices to target the security forces had also been detained.

The same day, villagers sent a handwritten note to Adivasi leader SoniSori, who lives in Dantewada. It listed the names of 40 people who they said had been detained by the police.

Later, the police released a list of the names and photographs of those killed in the encounter, mentioning the amount of reward money each of them carried, which came to a total of Rs 31 lakh.

Two men on the police’s list of the eight dead Maoists, however, also featured in the villagers’ handwritten notes as among the 40 civilians detained by the police.

Of the Rs 5.29 crore given to security personnel as reward money, one encounter alone accounts for Rs 1.85 crore. It took place in the forests of ChhoteBethiya in Kanker district on April 16. The police claim it was the most successful anti-Maoist operation to date since the security forces managed to kill 29 Maoists, the highest number in a single strike so far.

While Rs 1.78 crore was announced as the reward money for the Chhote Bethiya killings, another Rs 7.55 lakh was given as a reward for recovering weapons and other equipment.

In the villages of the dead Maoists, however, the families of many of those killed said they were unarmed cadres who had joined the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army less than a year ago.

One such case was that of 21-year-old Sunila Madkam.

Sunila Madkam’s f mother Sukdi said Sunila was the third among her six children. She studied in a government primary school till Class 3 but dropped out after the nearest middle school moved 60 km away to Orchha block headquarters.

Last year, after spending some time hanging around Maoist cadres, Sunila and her young friends, Sithal Mandavi, Sheela Kunjam, Geeta Kunjam, and Pintu Oyam, decided to formally join the People’s Liberation Guerilla Army. They did this in August, soon after the sowing season ended, her mother said.

Sunila last came home in the second week of March, after her maternal grandmother passed away. “I told her to be home, but she said she would visit home as and when she can and left,” the mother recalled.

Barely a month later, Sunila died in the April 16 encounter. Four of her friends, all of whom were recent Maoist recruits, were also killed. While one of them was identified by the police as a Maoist carrying a reward of Rs 2 lakh, the others, including Sunila, were shown to be Maoists carrying rewards of Rs 8 lakh each.

In the eight months she spent in the Maoist armed wing, Sunila “could not have done anything to earn such a reward,” her brother said.

At Sheela Kunjam’s home in Bhairamgarh’s Utla village, her father, Jogu Kunjam, also reacted with a sense of disbelief to the police claims–the young people were recent recruits, he pointed out and had barely done anything to be considered reward-worthy by the police.

But the families of Sunila and the other young Maoist cadres say they have reason to believe that the killings did not happen in the heat of the moment–they suspect the young cadres had been tortured before being shot dead.

When they went to Kanker to collect the bodies, they were shocked to see the nature of the injuries, Sunila’s brother said. Barring Pintu Oyam, who had a gunshot wound on his forehead, the others had injuries on their heads, hands and thighs that appeared to be wounds from being hit with heavy objects like stones, he alleged.

Sundarraj disputed these allegations: “Our jawans will not do that and are not trained to do so. The dead are respected, even if they are Maoists.” He claimed that the Maoists have, on several occasions, defaced and mutilated the bodies of security personnel.

In a statement released two days after the Chhote Bethiya encounter, the CPI (Maoist) acknowledged that all 29 killed were Maoist cadres. But the statement claimed that other cadres who had managed to escape the encounter had revealed that only 12 people had been shot during the gunfight. The rest, the Maoist statement alleged, had been rounded up, and made to walk two kilometres to a memorial erected by the Maoists, where they were tortured and killed.

 [Source: Scroll.in]

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Vol 57, No. 11, Sep 8 - 14, 2024