The End of Naxalism: The End of Accountability

https://thewire.in/rights/the-end-of-naxalism-the-end-of-accountability 

Conversation with Anuradha SenGupta in "The Big Picture'

 

Conversation with Anuradha SenGupta in "The Big Picture' on what Amit Shah's 'deadline' to finish Maoism means for villagers. 

There may be relief at an end to the operations, but they are worried about mining, displacement, and also the little things that the Maoists managed which were important in their lives - settling village disputes, helping women escape patriarchy, land levelling and village communal farming..

The Maoists may go, but if the camps remain, thats a new battle to fight

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GVKB05pWzo

Post-mortem of a PIL

I am writing this blog for my own satisfaction, after the Supreme Court disposed of our public interest litigation without proper hearing, on May 15 2025. We had filed the cases in 2007. This post must be read in conjunction with my chapters on litigating against counterinsurgency in my book, The Burning Forest, which deal in more detail with the 2011 judgement. 

Our Written Submissions

 IN THE SUPREME COURT OF INDIA

WRIT PETITION (CIVIL) NO. 250/2007 

IN THE MATTER OF: 

NANDINI SUNDAR 

VERSUS

STATE OF CHHATTISGARH & ANR. 

WRIT PETITION (CRIMINAL) NO. 119/2007 

AND IN THE MATTER OF: 

KARTAM JOGA 

VERSUS

STATE OF CHHATTISGARH 

CONTEMPT PETITION (CIVIL) NO. 140/2012

AND IN THE MATTER OF: 

NANDINI SUNDAR 

VERSUS

SHRI SUNIL KUMAR 

                     

COMPREHENSIVE NOTE ON THE ISSUES INVOLVED AND A RESPONSE WHICH THE STATE’S AFFIDAVIT 30.08.2024  SIMPLY DOES NOT ADDRESS 

The writ petitions were filed against the state policy of arming civilians and militarizing the districts of Bastar, Sukma, Bijapur and Dantewada in the state of Chhattisgarh, which resulted in an exponentially rising spiral of devastation. This case may broadly be divided into five sections: 

I. This Court’s indictment of a counter insurgency policy of using state sponsored vigilantes and SPOs, in its judgment reported as Nandini Sundar v. State of Chhattisgarh (2011) 7 SCC 547, and the brazen violation of the same by the State of Chhattisgarh thereafter.

This is reiterated in the State’s Affidavit dated 30.08.2024 filed following this Hon’ble Court’s directions of 16.7.2024 for a status update, purportedly showing compliance of order dated 05.07.2011 

II. The extent of human rights violations in Chhattisgarh and the State’s failure/inability to redress the same.

III. This Court’s directions to the CBI to investigate the incidents of violence (arson, rape and murder) in three villages of Chhattisgarh, namely Timmapuram, Morpalli and Tadmetla by the SPOs as well as the violent attack on Swami Agnivesh, and subsequent developments. 

IV. Role of the National Human Rights Commission.

V. Proposed Rehabilitative measures - Survey and Independent Monitoring.

Peace talks between Government and Maoists must include Affected Citizens

My article in The Wire Hindi on need for peace talks

https://thewirehindi.com/301638/peace-talks-between-government-and-maoists-must-include-affected-citizens/

And a slightly updated version in the English Wire.in

https://thewire.in/rights/chhattisgarh-union-govt-must-declare-ceasefire-with-maoists-affected-citizens-must-get-a-voice

Interview by CG Khabar, 20 April 2025

 Raghavendra Singh of CG Khabar interviewed me on the sidelines of a meeting in Dalli Rajhara on the need for peace talks. He asked about how I came to Bastar, the murder charges against me, and about the situation in Bastar. I argued that whatever the outcome of the peace talks between govt and Maoists - and its extremely important that there be peace talks - we need justice. All those killed, raped and displaced during this conflict should get some justice.  There is a third party to the talks - which is the most important - and that is the people of Bastar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvE7IuV-7s0

In Bastar's 'Shaheen Bagh', a Youth-Led Movement Quietly Perseveres

In Bastar's 'Shaheen Bagh', a Youth-Led Movement Quietly Perseveres

How Chhattisgarh has stalled a historic judgment

Ten years ago, on July 5, 2011, Justices B. Sudershan Reddy and S.S. Nijjar delivered a historic judgment banning Salwa Judum, a vigilante movement started in in 2005 and sponsored by the Chhattisgarh and Central government, ostensibly to fight against the Maoists. The judges also ruled that the use of surrendered Maoists and untrained villagers in frontline counter-insurgency operations as Special Police Officers (SPOs) was unconstitutional. It directed that the existing SPOs be redeployed in traffic management or other such safe duties. Other matters, especially prosecution of security forces and others involved in human rights violations, and rehabilitation of villagers who had suffered violence, were left pending, since the State had been asked to submit comprehensive plans for this.

Ten years on, nothing has been done to implement the judgment. Instead, the State government has merely renamed the SPOs. They are now known as the District Reserve Guard (DRG). Conversations with DRG members have revealed that most of them are captured or surrendered Maoists and are given automatic weaponry as soon as they join the police force. Some of them get one-three months of training, and some not even that. They commit the most excesses against their former fellow villagers, suffer the most casualties in any operation, and are paid much less than the regular constabulary, all the reasons the judges had outlawed their use. A contempt petition filed in 2012 is still awaiting hearing. Although ‘final hearings’ commenced in December 2018 before another bench of Justice Madan Lokur and Justice Deepak Gupta, the judges retired soon thereafter and there has been no hearing since.

Press Release, 6th August 2020: NHRC Orders Chhattisgarh Government to Compensate Human Rights Defenders Rs 1 lakh each “for Mental Agony and Violation of Human Rights” caused by false charges and arrests

The National Human Rights Commission has directed the Chhattisgarh State Government to compensate human rights defenders Rs 1 lakh each for false cases filed against them, with compliance within six weeks.

 

On 5^th November 2016, the Chhattisgarh police lodged an FIR against us under various sections of the IPC, Arms Act, and UAPA for the alleged murder of one Shamnath Baghel of Nama village, Sukma District. The case was supposedly filed on the written complaint of Shyamnath Baghel’s widow, Vimla Baghel. However, she is on record saying she did not name anyone. On 15th November 2016, the Supreme Court gave us protection from arrest. In 2018, since the Chhattisgarh police had not taken any steps to investigate or close the matter, we filed a petition in the Supreme Court. Following Court directions, the Chhattisgarh government investigated, and finding there was no case against us, dropped the charges in February 2019. The NHRC had also taken up this matter in 2016, along with the police burning our effigies and IG Kalluri threatening to stone us if we entered Bastar.

 

In February 2020, taking note of the Chhattisgarh Police admission that there was no case against us, the NHRC noted:

 

 “In our considered opinion, these persons would have certainly suffered a great mental pain and agony as a result of registration of false FIRs against them by the police, which is a violation of their human rights and for this the State Government should compensate them. Therefore we recommend and direct the Government of Chhattisgarh through its Chief Secretary to pay a sum of Rs One Lakh each as monetary compensations to the six persons namely Prof Nandini Sundar, Ms. Archana Prasad, Shri Vineet Tiwari, Shri Sanjay Parate, Ms. Manju and Shri Mangla Ram Karma, whose human rights were gravely violated by the Chhattisgarh police.”

 

Which are the Wars Worth Fighting?

As India wages a war on coronavirus, it is important for the country to sort out its priorities.  The only other war that must accompany the lockdown is the war on hunger, and all other operations must be suspended. When the Supreme Court has asked the states to see if undertrials can be released, there is little logic in arresting more people. When the government’s first priority must be to save lives, it cannot afford to lose more lives.

The recent death of 17 jawans or 19 if one were to believe a recent Maoist press release, the wounding of some 14 others, as well as the death of some 3 Maoists once again underlines the futility of the war in Chhattisgarh.

Seeking Truth and Reconciliation in Chhattisgarh

The Indian government claims it is slowly but surely winning the war against Maoist guerillas in India’s resource rich forested regions, and has consistently dismissed widespread accusations of human rights violations as propaganda by Maoists or their urban supporters. It has also acted to preempt future accusations by jailing human rights activists and lawyers working in these areas. But as a recent report by a government appointed enquiry commission shows, these accusations are credible and need to be addressed.

The art of creating ‘happy’ open-air prisons

In 2005 the BJP government of Chhattisgarh claimed that  Salwa Judum was a self-initiated people’s movement aiming to finish Naxalism, and people were flocking to Salwa Judum camps which would be models of development. Instead, all the people who were forcibly incarcerated in Salwa Judum camps fled back to their villages as soon as they were able and fifteen years on, the Naxalites are hardly finished, even if weakened. The villagers whose homes were burnt by Salwa Judum or those whose family members were killed in the conflict, and who have still not got justice, are living testaments to how lies purveyed by the media and ruling parties remain simply lies.

Statement in connection with our names being dropped from chargesheet

We are happy that the Chhattisgarh police have dropped our names from the chargesheet in the murder of Shyamnath Baghel. We hope that the many hundreds of innocent adivasis and all others who have been falsely implicated and are languishing in jail will also soon get justice. We are grateful to our lawyers, friends and all those who helped us in clearing our name.

From Kathua and Unnao to Chintagufa

Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently provided the media with another photo-op by helping an Adivasi woman in Bijapur wear her new slippers. But like much else in his government, the gesture is tokenistic – only one person per family of tendu leaf collectors gets the grand gift of slippers. In the meantime, not one person has been compensated for their houses and all their belongings – including slippers –  being burnt during the time of the Salwa Judum.

Saying ‘Jai Bhim’ in Chhattisgarh counts for little if one cannot implement Babasaheb’s vision in practice. Would Ambedkar have been happy to see the constitution subverted by a government that cannot protect its young daughters, a party whose MLAs are accused of rape and whose ministers support rapists? The day the adivasis of Bastar who have been gangraped, whose relatives have been killed and whose houses have been burnt get justice is the day the government’s demand that the Maoists lay down arms will have some chance of being heard.

This is a story from exactly a year ago, April 2017, when security forces in Chintagufa village of Sukma district allegedly raped a minor girl. On April 2, at around 4 am, the girl and her mother were sleeping in the courtyard of their house when CRPF personnel came looking for her elder brother, who was supposedly a sangham member, or a village-level Maoist sympathiser. Her brother wasn’t there. Three men dragged her to a distance, and two of them took turns raping her, she said later. The other police/CRPF personnel stayed back, beat her mother and pushed her younger sisters inside the house and locked it. The victim was injured on the neck during the rape as photos taken at the time reveal. Due to the darkness, she could not identify the men who raped her.

The matter was first reported by a villager on April 3 last year and published in Nai Duniya on April 4 morning. That same article quoted the DIG, P. Sunder Raj, saying the allegations were false, mala fide and intended by ‘white-collar Naxals’ to tarnish the image of the police. All this before any police investigation, even though at first reporting, the reported rape clearly came under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offcences (POCSO) Act.. Instead, the journalist who reported the matter was questioned.

The Burning Forest and DU's Academic Council

http://blog.juggernaut.in/the-burning-forest-and-dus-academic-council/At my first meeting of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Delhi University, some colleagues objected to a heading in our Sociology of India introductory course, ‘India as an object of study’. “India cannot be an object”, they said, “she is our motherland”. Subsequent meetings of the Academic Council only confirmed my belief that there is something deeply wrong with this procedure especially the higher up the academic food chain it goes– at best it offers an opportunity for non-social-scientists to show off, for how could any one from sociology dare to comment on a mathematics course and be taken seriously? At worst, in an illiberal regime it acts as a form of censorship.

Why Podiyam Panda needs another hearing in court

PRESS STATEMENT

22^nd May 2017

The Podiyam Panda ‘surrender’ is the first one being challenged before a court. The entire experience shows the questionable legality of the surrender process in Chhatisgarh.

In the habeas case filed by his wife, Muiye Panda, Podiyam Panda came and went before the High Court under police guard. What value does such a production have? The Supreme Court has held in several judgments that a statement made before a magistrate by someone who is in police custody and thinks they will go back to police custody cannot be relied upon. This applies to the Panda case too.

How the Chhattisgarh Police Turned a Well-Regarded Sarpanch Into a Fugitive, and Now Captive

Since the April 24 Maoist attack in Bastar which 25 CRPF personnel were killed, experts have talked of how the road from Dornapal to Jagargunda has been under construction for some five years, and lamented the fact that so many jawans have lost their lives trying to provide protection for road building.

But there was a time before 2006-7 and before Salwa Judum destroyed this area, when this was a thriving road by Bastar standards, with at least three important weekly markets located on it – Chintagufa, Chintalnar and Jagargunda. Even now, despite the devastation in the villages around, there is a weekly market at Chintagufa, a school, a fair price shop (PDS) and a health centre (however erratically it functions) – and the credit for this must go entirely to its former sarpanch, Podiyam Panda.

No end in sight for India's bloody Maoist conflict

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/05/sight-india-bloody-maoist-conflict-170508120738882.html

On 24 April, 2017, 25 men from the paramilitary central reserve police force, India’s main counterinsurgency force in the central Indian war theatre, were killed in a Maoist ambush.  Predictably, the media outrage, the solutions offered by security pundits and the statement issued by the Maoists had a strong sense of déjà vu. 76 men from another battalion of the CRPF had been ambushed and killed in this very stretch of Sukma district near Tadmetla in Chhattisgarh on April 6, 2010.

In the seven years between then and now, there have been other CRPF deaths – for instance, 12 CRPF men were killed barely a month previously on 11 March 2017; there have been unmarked deaths of Maoist cadres, and above all, there has been a relentless assault on the human rights of adivasi or indigenous villagers across the region.

The Burning Forest: India's War in Bastar

--> The Indian Government has repeatedly described Maoist guerrillas as 'the biggest security threat to the country’ and Bastar in central India as their headquarters. This book chronicles how the armed conflict between the government and the Maoists has devastated the lives of some of India's poorest, most vulnerable citizens, starting from 2005 when a government- sponsored vigilante movement killed hundreds and drove thousands of villagers into camps, to the present day when it is the most militarized region in the country. It is not a coincidence that Bastar has some of India’s biggest mineral reserves. 
Based on extensive field visits, court testimonies, government documents and an active participant role in the events she writes about,  Sundar also tracks the responses of political parties, the media, human rights activists and the judiciary to the ongoing crisis.

In Bastar, it looks as if the failed Salwa Judum idea is being given a fresh lease of life

http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/toi-edit-page/in-bastar-it-looks-as-if-the-failed-salwa-judum-idea-is-getting-a-fresh-lease-of-life/

The security establishment never tires of claiming that human rights activists are partisan, and only blame the state. But when they do expose Maoist crimes, the police is not interested. One wonders if the establishment’s problem is really the Maoists – in whose name the state is spending several thousand crores on militarisation – or rights activists and the idea of democracy they uphold.   

Last week, four of us, including a colleague from JNU, visited Bastar division. The press release we issued upon our return is unequivocal in blaming both the Maoists and the police for the current vulnerabilities of villagers. However, the police have drummed up a campaign vilifying us, claiming, ridiculously, that we threatened villagers with Maoist retaliation and instigated them against the police. The Bastar collector, Amit Kataria, has added to this by circulating fake complaints on social media, fuelling the ongoing anti-JNU hysteria.