113 Chhattisgarh tribals back on road to freedom after 5 years behind bars
The acquittals have reopened a debate on how this case is emblematic of a larger problem; of arrests made in villages in and around encounter spots in the aftermath of such attacks that fall apart without sufficient evidence.
BASTAR: On July 17, all eyes were on a massive white iron gate under a stone archway that has the words “Jagdalpur Central Jail” emblazoned on it. At 4.30pm, the gate creaked open ever so slightly, allowing people to start emerging in batches of 10. Some wore lungis, others shirts and jeans. Most carried in their hands a packet of clothes; perhaps a toothbrush and a comb. Each group stood under the shade of a nearby tree, waiting patiently for the others, talking among themselves in whispers; absorbing their first taste of air outside the prison in five years.
In half an hour, they were a crowd of 110.
Then they began walking briskly, some breaking into a canter — past the prison’s outer grounds, the main gate, the bungalows of the Bastar superintendent of police and the Bastar district collector, stopping only on the main street outside. They were finally on the road to freedom; the road back home.
On Friday, five years after the worst Maoist ambush in seven years left 25 CRPF personnel dead in Sukma’s Burkapal, 121 tribals arrested by the Chhattisgarh Police in the days after the attack were acquitted by the designated NIA (National Investigation Agency) court in Dantewada. The court said that there was no evidence that these people were part of the armed attack, or were even present at the spot.
On Sunday, 110 of them were released from the Jagdalpur jail, and three from Dantewada. Eight others, accused in other cases as well, are still in jail on other charges.
As he stood on the road, waiting for a bus that would take him back to Sukma, over 100km away, a fidgety 25-year-old explained his hurry. “Five years of my life have been destroyed in that building behind me. Who knows if they arrest us again? I want to go home and see my family.”
The acquittals have reopened a debate on how this case is emblematic of a larger problem; of arrests made in villages in and around encounter spots in the aftermath of such attacks that fall apart without sufficient evidence. While activists have long claimed tribals unconnected to the attacks are often arrested and kept in jail under stringent sections, the police argue that these acquittals are a result of the difficulty in collecting evidence and finding credible eyewitnesses in areas that have strong Maoist influence. In the Tadmetla attack in 2010 for instance, which left 76 CRPF personnel dead, 10 tribals picked up from in and around the area were acquitted by the same NIA court. Similarly, in May 2013, 13 people were let off for the want of evidence in a case related to a Maoist attack on Congress leader Avdesh Gautam in 2010.
The Burkapal attack
March-April 2017 was a tough period in Bastar for the CRPF. On March 11, 13 CPRF personnel were killed in a Maoist ambush of a “road opening party” — a team that gives security cover to under-construction roads — on the stretch between Injeram and Bhejji. On April 24, 60km away, close to the village of Burkapal on the under-construction 56km long Dornapal-Jagargunda road, another road opening party of the CRPF’s 74th battalion came under fire again, caught in another ambush. When the intense exchange of fire ended, 25 CRPF personnel were dead in what was the biggest Maoist attack in Bastar since 76 CRPF personnel died in 2010 in Tadmetla.
When HT reached the spot of the ambush the following morning, there were still signs of the intense firefight that had broken out. The road at the centre of the conflict was unmade, the colour of the earth a deep red. The actual firefight had broken out in dense shrubbery on one side of the road, and the ground was still pockmarked with splotches of blood. The site of the encounter was not completely sanitized at the time, and signs of the weapons used were everywhere. Nestled in one tumble of grass was an improvised explosive fitted on the end of an arrow, built by the Maoists using wire and gunpowder, meant to distract the security forces. In another were shells fired from SLR rifles and the empty cartridges of under-barrel grenade launchers.
CRPF officials said that at 5am on April 24, 76 jawans left CRPF’s Burkapal camp, a kilometre away from the encounter spot, to secure the road and an under-construction bridge nearby. At 12.55pm, they were on their way back to camp when they came under massive fire. DP Upadhyaya, the then DIG CRPF(Dantewada) said that there were 32 CRPF personnel on one side of the road, eight on the road, and 36 on the other side. “The group of 36 men came under fire. There were a huge number of Maoists, and they used the villagers of Burkapal as human shields, which prevented one flank from joining the other,” Upadhyaya said at the time.
CRPF also claimed that there were Maoist deaths because there were signs that bodies had been dragged on the ground, but they were unable to recover any of the dead assailants. From the slain personnel, the Maoists looted 12 AK 47s, five UBGLs (under-barrel grenade launchers), two LMGs, two INSAS rifles, four AKM assault rifles, five wireless sets, two binoculars, 22 bulletproof jackets, 59 AK magazines and other ammunition.
The state police said more than 150 Maoists were involved in the attack, carried out using “automatic rifles, handmade bombs, and indigenous rockets”. The prime accused, they said, were Maoist commanders Nagesh, Situ, Sonu and Madvi Hidma, head of the battalion number 1 of the CPI(Maoist) in Bastar.
In the days that followed, with Hidma and other commanders deep within the forests of Bastar and out of reach, the Chhattisgarh Police registered a case at the Chintagufa police station and booked 125 tribals of multiple villages in and around Burkapal under multiple sections of the Indian Penal Code; two sections (25 and 27) of the Arms Act; two sections of Explosive Substances Act; and under the provisions of the Chhattisgarh Public Safety Act and the controversial Unlawful Activities Prevention Act. Of the 125 villagers who were charged, three were juveniles and were granted bail, and one person died in prison.
The court’s verdict
While all 125 people were arrested by the Chhattisgarh Police in 2017, largely within a month of the attack, trial in the case only began in August 2021. On Friday, special judge Deepak Kumar Deshlahre acquitted all 121 people in the case before his court, arguing that there was no evidence that they were present during the attack.
After a trial, which saw 25 prosecution witnesses take to the stand and 20 others turn hostile, Deshlahre said in his order, “The presence of the accused at the spot and their identities has been the central question of this trial. However prosecution witnesses have not identified the accused as present at the spot, and given no evidence of this. There is also no evidence of any arms and ammunition being recovered from the accused.”
Critical of the prosecution’s stance, Deshlahre said that none of the witnesses had any “believable” evidence that any of the accused had connections to the banned CPI(Maoist) group. “In this situation, it is therefore found that there is no charge that has been proved against the accused.”
What the tribals say
Two days after the NIA court’s order, 26-year-old Padam Puska, a jute bag in one hand, and a backpack on his shoulders, was one of the 110 released from Jagdalpur jail, waiting for public conveyance on the side of the road.
From the Koraigundam village in Sukma, Puska says he was sleeping in his hut on April 25 when his home was surrounded at 4pm, and he was arrested along with his brother. “I had just been married. Four people from my village were arrested, but we never found out why. My brother and I were only subsistence farmers and had never been with the Maoists.”
A man in his early twenties, in a blue T-shirt and jeans, said that he was arrested a month after the attack, from his home in Burkapal. Still afraid of talking about the day, the young man spoke hesitantly about the violent encounter that broke out less than a kilometre away from his home. “We were at home when we heard the sounds of the firing. When the encounter broke out, we hid inside our homes. A month later, I was arrested from my house. I have never been with the Maoists, and now my family has had to sell our land, and our cattle to fund the legal case,” he said.
Most of the released tribals come from villages, typically with populations of 400 to 500 people, in the vicinity of Burkapal, on the Dornapal-Jagargunda road. The 56-kilometre stretch has 15 security camps meant to protect road construction on what is a crucial axis in south Bastar. The road was sanctioned in December 2010, and to this day remains unfinished, with 18.5 kilometres still unpaved.
Activists say that the Burkapal case underscores the problem of wrongful incarceration that tribals often face in Bastar.
“Five years of their lives gone for a crime they did not commit. Five years when they were allowed no relief because bail was denied at the designated NIA court at the district level as well as the high court. Should the state police not be also accused of criminal conspiracy to make ordinary villagers a scapegoat in their fight against the Maoists? Will the state compensate them for their lost time or earnings?” said Bela Bhatia, a human rights activist based in Bastar and one of the defence lawyers in the case.
Activists also said that the time taken to conclude the case — more than five years — was symptomatic of the problem of how slowly trials move in such cases.
In March 2019, the Bhupesh Baghel government formed a committee under justice AK Patnaik, with the mandate to reassess the cases filed against scheduled tribes in the state. In December 2019, the committee recommended the withdrawal of over 300 cases registered under the local excise law, and said that members of the community may have been alienated from the mainstream on account of the large number of criminal cases pending against them.
“But the effort of the justice Patnaik committee that was constituted for this purpose has not extended to adivasis caught in such ‘Naxali’ cases. The Burkapal case underlines the urgent need to do this because a very large majority of adivasis behind bars in Bastar have been arrested in similar circumstances,” Bhatia said.
Government’s version
Senior police officials posted in Bastar were non-committal on the question of appealing against the verdict and said that a decision would be taken after a thorough examination of the order.
“The court has passed a verdict based on the available evidence and circumstances of the case. In compliance with the court order 113 accused have been released from jail,” inspector general of police (Bastar range) P Sunderaj said.
Police officers working in Bastar, however, said that this case was an example of the difficulty in gathering evidence post such an encounter. “In most Maoist cases, there is no eye witness evidence. Mostly there are hearsay accounts which have low evidentiary value. Villagers shy away from being witnesses because of Maoist influence. These are factors that cannot be ignored,” said a senior police officer posted in Bastar who asked not to be named.