Vikram Raj
A tribal woman in Bastar was allegedly raped and then murdered under governmental supervision. The incident took place in the Bijapur district of Chhattisgarh.
Family members of the victim told that on the night of May 30, their daughter was sleeping along with the family in the courtyard.
Around 11-12 o’clock in the night, a group of District Reserve Guard (Modern Salwa Judum, the individuals who are generally local tribals and who live in administrative repayment and are trained by Police and the CRPF, so they can help the public authority powers to penetrate in the tribal regions) encompassed their home and coercively removed their daughter in the forest.
The following morning, when her family along with others of the village arrived at Dantewada with the expectation that their daughter would be in police custody, they discovered that their daughter had been killed with an allegation to be a Maoist with a 2 lakh rupees reward.
On seeing her deceased carcass, the relatives told that she was not only exclusively assaulted, yet her body had some blade cuts on her thigh, fingers, hand, head and bosom.
The relatives have tried filing their complaint at the Nelasnar police headquarters, but even after seven days of the occurrence, the police didn’t register an FIR.
In the meantime, Inspector General of Police, Bastar Range, Sundarraj P has denied the allegations of the family, asserting that the encounter depended on an operation and the lady was not picked up from her home.
The IG has said that on May 31, the presence of a unit of Maoists, PLGA Platoon No. 16, was accounted for, after which this operation was launched.
This isn’t the first run of such news coming from Bastar. On 17th may, 3 tribal men who were opposing the setup of CRPF camps were shot dead.
We have seen a long history of such monstrosities; during the Salwa Judum, not just more than 1,000 tribal ladies were assaulted under the supervision of public authority yet numerous villages were burned to the ground.
Indeed, even a well-known social and tribal dissident Soni Sori was physically tormented in police custody. Later on, the then Bijapur SP, Mr. Manhar who ordered open fire against the tribal was made the commissioner of the State Human Rights Commission. Similarly, Ankit Garg, the then DSP who was blamed for torment of Soni Sori, was granted gallantry decoration.
Once the then Chief Minister, Raman Singh had said that “Any tribals who do not relocate from their villages, will be considered as Maoists”.
The issue of wonder is that the public authority changed, the Congress came to control under the administration of Bhupesh Baghel, however, military atrocities have never been halted. The coming age of tribals is constrained to feel that police besiegement is a definitive reality of their life.