Dead ‘Maoist’ Talking

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 Indian state for nearly four decades. This year, Chhattisgarh police claim to have killed 141 Maoists in 38 encounters, higher than any annual tally seen in the past, barring 2009.]

Around noon on April 4, 2024, the Bijapur district hospital compound was overflowing with people: elderly men, women with breastfeeding babies, infants chasing their mothers and clinging to their dhotis, young boys running after every police vehicle that drove in.
Two days before, the police in this southernmost district of Chhattisgarh claimed to have killed 13 Maoists in a gunfight in the Korcholi-Nendra forests near Gangalur village.

Their bodies had been brought to the Bijapur district headquarters, along with village residents who had been detained as part of the security operation. Although the police had not officially declared a number, locals said 25-30 people had been detained from seven to eight villages in the area.

It was in search of their family members that the residents of these villages had poured into the hospital compound.

“I have come looking for my brother,” said HemlaLachhu, a young man from Todka village. “He was with the party, and we knew he had gone for a meeting.” By party, he meant the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist), which has been waging an armed insurgency in the forests of Bastar for decades, with both cadres and leaders drawn from the local Adivasi communities that live there.

Unga Parsi’s family had come from Kawadgoan village to look for him. They said he had joined the party less than a year ago.

The honesty of the villagers was striking – when asked if their missing family member was with the party, they promptly answered with a straightforward yes or no. There was no attempt to hide an affiliation with the insurgent group. But, equally, there was no hesitation in declaring that a missing person was a civilian, not a Maoist.

“We have come looking for our chacha, Chaitu Potam,” Bodu Potam from Korcholi village said. “Wo Naxali nahi hai, uski to biwi aur chheba chhehain.” He is not a Naxali. He has a wife and six children.

Potam had first gone to the Bijapur police station in search of his uncle. While he did not find him there, he spotted other familiar faces. “We met Sarila Potam, a girl from our village,” he told this correspondent.

Unlike the practice followed in other encounter cases, the Bijapur police had not released photographs of those killed in the Korcholi-Nendra gunfight as part of its press statements. Instead, it had displayed to local journalists 13 body bags lying alongside an array of weapons – light machine guns, .303 rifles, 12-bore rifles, barrel grenade launchers, codex wires, cartridges, vessels, walkie-talkies, Maoist literature, solar panels. There were also daily-use items like soap, toothbrush, oil, creams and medicines.

At the hospital, when the policeman finally held up his phone to show photos of the dead, many winced at the sight of their bloodied, battered faces. Said Bodu Potam, in frustration: “Kuchh pehchan me hi nahi aa raha.” It is hard to recognise anyone. “The faces are swollen, there is blood all over.”

Soon, masked hospital staff opened the doors of the morgue, pulling out bodies still wrapped in plastic bags, laying them on the floor. As the edge of the plastic sheet covering them was pulled back to reveal their faces, the villagers stepped forward tentatively, with women using their sari pallus and men their gamchas to cover their noses to ward off the stench.

Among those who died in the gunfire, not all were Maoists, the villagers said.

The village of Nendra lies about 35 km south of the Bijapur district headquarters. It falls under the jurisdiction of the Gangalur police station. Surrounded by several forested hills such as Masumeta, Gorgonmeta, Reten, Marker, Pendemeta and Kaaurmeta, the village is home to about 60 families.

On April 1, Nendra hosted the annual festival or karsaad held in honour of a local deity connected to the Kunjam clan, known as KohlaKosum Pen Devi.

Thousands of people from villages spread across the Gangalur and Basaguda areas had descended on Nendra to take part in the festival, said Sonu Lakku, the perma or community priest. The festivities took place in permapara, the hamlet where the perma lives. The ceremonial rituals went off peacefully in the morning, he said, followed by dance and drinking at night.

But next morning, around 4.30 am, everyone woke up to the sound of guns booming on the nearby Masumeta hill.

As soon as there was light in the sky, Lakku recalled rushing to the ground where the deity was kept. Then, to their alarm, they saw security forces descend from the hills.

In southern Chhattisgarh, residents of forest villages like Nendra, which lie in Maoist-dominated territory, tend to be fearful of the security forces – for good reason. Several times, as judicial enquiries have established, security forces out on Maoist operations have ended up gunning down civilians instead.

In its press statement about the encounter, the police claimed to have killed 13 Maoist cadres from company no 2 of the People’s Liberation Guerilla Army, the armed wing of the Communist Party of India (Maoist).

But the villagers had prepared another list, according to which 10 of the 13 killed were Maoists. But three others, including Kamli, were civilians.

Another civilian, according to the list, was Chaitu Potam, the 25-year-old.

Now, at home in Korcholi, a neighbouring village of Nendra, his wife, Somi Potam, said that she had found it difficult to identify her husband among the battered faces at the hospital, till she saw his toe.

On April 4, they found his body in the hospital morgue, wrapped in plastic, with the police identifying him as a Maoist. Somi said she protested on the spot, telling the police that her husband was a civilian, but they did not listen to her. Quietly, she returned with his body.

Asked if she planned to seek justice for her husband’s killing, Somi said: “I would, if I get support.”

The other body was of a young man from the nearby Metapal village, who Lakku said was a Maoist.

Most bodies were hard to recognise since the faces were battered, bruised, covered with blood, he noted. As they spoke among themselves about the state of the bodies, the police heckled them and asked them to quickly load the bodies, he recalled.

The six men were not the only ones that the security forces had detained.

As a police statement released on April 5 noted, a man named Sudru Kunjam and two women named Ayti Punem and Malti Kunjam had been “rounded up as the three were trying to run away as they saw the force”. Another two men, AytuPunem and EnkuPunem, had been arrested since the police had a warrant pending against them, the statement added.

But the police statement was silent on another detention.

JogiKunjam was at home when the security forces barged in.

Soon, security personnel followed in her footsteps. Entering the house, they pulled out the woman, took her to the backyard, made her wear a Maoist uniform, Jogi recounted. Where did the uniform come from? The security forces were actually carrying it.

A detailed account of the Maoist meeting came from – believe or not – a man featured on the police list of the 13 dead.

[Source: Scroll.in]

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Vol 57, No. 26, Dec 22 - 28, 2024