JAVED IQBAL - This is How a Naxalite Dies // Jharkhand: Maoists’ kin, victims of violence meet, share their stories
The story of Rajita’s life
and death has a Rashomon-like quality where not just truth but
the idea of what is moral depends on who is telling the tale.
A
32-year-old Maria Gond woman, Rajita Usendi, was killed on the night of May 8
in Gadchiroli, Maharashtra. She was a Naxalite. “They threw six or
seven grenades to kill her…” “It was the longest encounter in Gadchiroli
history…” “Her body was burnt beyond recognition…” These were some of the
comments I heard about the gun battle that took place, after the police
returned with the burnt corpse of the unidentified woman found in a house on
the outskirts of Horekasa village in Gadchiroli district.
Raje and Birija, the septuagenarian parents of the slain Naxalite commander
Rajita Usendi. Credit: Javed Iqbal
Eight days later, on
May 16, constable Bandhu Vichami, also a Maria Gond. was killed after being
kidnapped by CPI-Maoist fighters near Koti police station for the alleged
offence of ‘building an information network.’ There being no civilian
witnesses, the specific details of his death are not known. Neither incident is part of
the mainstream narrative of events unfolding in the heart of India. While a
memorial poster was put up for Vichami on May 17 outside the Gadchiroli
sessions court (as has been done for countless other slain policemen),
Rajita’s body was still in the mortuary, her public memory as controversial as
the life she lived. Didn’t the Supreme Court once say the Naxalites were
also ‘children of the republic’?
Rajita was born in
1984 or 1985 – the exact year is not known – in Javeli village, in Kasansur
panchayat of Etapalli Block, and died as Naxalite area commander for Chatgaon. Her village Javeli is
isolated:. villagers don’t venture too far into the towns, for fear of being
deemed Naxalite supporters by the police. Others from the village had also
joined the Maoists: a young man, Ramsu, who had previously joined the party,
decided to leave it and live at home. However, he was not allowed to resume a
normal life; a police team eventually arrived to take him away and then
attempted to distribute saris, volleyballs and carrom boards. Ramsu
is now a surrendered Maoist, but he only joined the police because he was
beaten, according to the villagers, who bear no ill will towards him.
In the village itself,
a decades-old transformer lies derelict. The village subsists without
electricity. There are 83 homes in Javeli, 81 of which are Maria Gond, one
Parden and one mixed Bengali-Maria, which the villagers talk about with pride
(the father was a Bengali who married a Maria, whose son has also married a
Maria). The villagers own land but depend on rain for cultivation.
Rajita was the
youngest daughter of Birija and Raje and had studied till class 5. She had two
older sisters, both married and with children.
She joined the party
when she was still a teenager. Some say she was in the party for 18 years,
others say 15. In one version of the story, she was 14 years-old when she
joined the party, in another she was 17. Either way, there are no traces of her
left in the village: no documents, no photographs. The police came in 2007 and
removed every bit of her life that she had left behind.
The people of Javeli
spoke in whispers.
They knew I was not a journalist from the jungle but an outsider, a journalist from Mumbai. Not even in a thousand conversations would they reveal to me the secrets of Rajita. What they told me was what they had decided the world could know about a child who joined the party, became a leader and was finally burnt to death in a village not far from theirs. For instance, they would not tell me whether Rajita was involved in the May 21, 2009, ambush in the nearby Dhanora forests that claimed the lives of 16 security personnel, including five policewomen. Or whether she was involved in the deadly May 5, 2011, improvised explosive device blast that killed five civilians on the Dhanora-Rajnandgaon road. Even if they knew, it was clear that they were not going to tell me these things.
They knew I was not a journalist from the jungle but an outsider, a journalist from Mumbai. Not even in a thousand conversations would they reveal to me the secrets of Rajita. What they told me was what they had decided the world could know about a child who joined the party, became a leader and was finally burnt to death in a village not far from theirs. For instance, they would not tell me whether Rajita was involved in the May 21, 2009, ambush in the nearby Dhanora forests that claimed the lives of 16 security personnel, including five policewomen. Or whether she was involved in the deadly May 5, 2011, improvised explosive device blast that killed five civilians on the Dhanora-Rajnandgaon road. Even if they knew, it was clear that they were not going to tell me these things.
Her mother Raje sobbed
softly, repeating in Gondi, as she remembered Rajita’s body arriving at the
village: “She had no hands, no legs… Her head was half-burnt.” The police sent the
family a note that said ‘one female Naxal member was killed’ and asked
them to identify the body. They were taken to Gadchiroli, where they identified
Rajita’s remains and were questioned. They were held there all day and fed
chicken and rice for dinner.
“We told you so many
times to ask her to surrender,” one of the C-60 commandos told them in Gondi,
“But you didn’t listen, she didn’t listen and now you’ve come to take away her
burnt body.”
“We put bombs inside
the room and killed her,” they would add.
Rajita’s 75 year-old
father spoke to me in a slow voice about how his daughter made the right
choice, how he used to miss her only in the beginning after she left and how
she used to be a different person when she came back to visit. “Sarkar zulm karti
hai, toh ladki achha kam karne ke liye gaye,” he said (“my girl has given her life to the struggle”). He
repeated this again and again.
She never married; she
never had any children. She never returned to the village as anyone but a
Maoist: giving speeches and warnings, issuing statements. “She used to say that
we should live well and not fight among ourselves, that young men shouldn’t
waste their lives drinking and that if there is a fight, one should sort it out
in the village itself and not report it,” a village elder added. “We never thought she
would get killed. She never stayed in one place for more than two or three
hours. But she was in this village from afternoon till evening,” said someone
else.
The last stand
What were Rajita’s
last moments like? She died in a room without a window, shredded with bullet
holes. Her body was found next to burnt mahua fruits – is that
how a Maria Gond dies, burnt to death with mahua fruits? Some
say she was physically sick and could not escape and told her bodyguard to run
away. Others say her bodyguard ran away in fear, leaving her alone to die.
The villagers of
Horekasa kept repeating that there was almost no firing from inside the house –
that most of the firing was by the security forces and was intermittent, from a
few guns at a time. The forces sat inside anti-landmine vehicles and fired at
the house. The Naxalites did not fire because innocent people were inside, said
the villagers.
It was at three in the
morning that a barrage of firing hit the house, along with large explosions.
This account by the villagers is almost identical to that by the police. In an
interview with the Indian Express, the
superintendent of police went on record and said, “We spent a lot of time
trying to convince the Naxals to give up but they sent back the messengers,
asking them to mind their own business. After we decided to take on the Naxals,
we first cordoned off the village and also evacuated other houses to keep
civilians away at a safe distance. All this took many hours. The actual firing
did not last for more than 30 minutes.”
The story is ‘almost
identical’ since the police claimed that the house where the ‘Naxals’ were
hiding was on the outskirts and not in the middle of the village. The proximity of the
firing to people’s homes resulted in bullet holes in their walls at angles
proving only security forces could have done it. The villagers were also shouted
at and forced to spend the entire time inside their homes, at first only on the
floor. The women narrating the events exclaimed that they had to go to the
toilet within their homes.
The villagers were
only allowed outside when the security forces wanted them to put out the fire
that had engulfed Rajita, which had happened under unclear circumstances: did
it start when multiple under barrel grenade launchers were fired at her hideout,
or was petrol or kerosene thrown into the house? The other
inconsistency between the villagers’ and the police accounts was regarding the
escape of the second Naxalite, who apparently disappeared in the dead of night,
from a house with only one exit, surrounded by dozens of security forces. His
escape seemed humorous to the villagers of the panchayat: he escaped like “a
fart in the smoke,” said one, who mimicked the runaway taking his clothes off,
crouching and escaping into the darkness.
“How did the police
get there?” the villagers asked, alternating between Marathi to Gondi as they
conversed, confused about who the informant could have been. They spoke of how
Rajita had gone to the house of Yamunabai, an old woman, and asked for
water. She was tired and wished to rest and asked Yamunabai to let her
into her house and lock the door. When the police finally arrived, they forced
Yamunabai to open the door and found two knapsacks. The scene the villagers
then described is similar to what happens when a snake enters a house: the
police backed away in fear, wondering if Naxals were actually inside and
cordoned off the house.
When it was confirmed
that Rajita and her bodyguard were there, they sent villagers to ask them to
surrender. One doesn’t know why Rajita refused to surrender, or why a
lone woman was surrounded by dozens of policemen killed in a village only
three kilometres away from a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) camp? The
police could argue that they didn’t want to be ambushed by more Naxalites.
But
they had superiority of umbers and firepower, with a CRPF camp a mere
10 minutes away. Wouldn’t they want more Naxalites to fight and be
decimated; isn’t that why they are deployed?
The only sound the
villagers of Horekasa heard from the house on fire was Rajita’s screaming. She
abused no one, raised not a single slogan and shouted nothing at all.
The day after the
house burnt down, the assistant superintendent of police told the villagers to
account for the damage caused and submit a petition to the nearest
police station.
Five people, including
the police patil of the village Mahadev Ramaji Parse went to
the Chatgaon police station with an account of everything that had burnt –
crops, money, books and documents – but they were only beaten by the policemen.
“Tumhare goan mein
naxali ate hai, aur humko nahi bola tumne!” the policemen would abuse them, even
demanding the aged patil resign: “Tum gaon ke patil ho ke kuch nahi
karte ho.” The village gaita or
headman, Pandurang Pada, son of Gendu, was beaten with a bajirao, a
kind of whip, along with the aged Yamunabai Parse, wife of Madhav, and her
nephew Lalaji Narote, in whose house Ranjita had taken refuge, and Gyaneshwar
Kirange, husband of Ranjan and an ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activist)
worker.
All three men
showed the week-old injuries inflicted by a bajirao, while
Yamunabai was beaten on the palms of her hand. As Gyaneshwar displayed his
torture wounds, his neighbours teased him about how he had once tried to join
the police but hadn’t been able to. “Now we have to live
in fear of the ones in the jungle,” added the gaita of the
village.
The story of Rajita’s life
and death has a Rashomon-like quality where not just truth but
the idea of what is moral depends on who is telling the tale. For some,
the Naxalite commander was nothing: she deserved the death she was given,
and was killed like a dreaded animal that sneaks into a house.
Others feared
her. To many in the village, she was a respected leader who, as an
adivasi, spoke to them in their own language. And to her parents, she was
their own, a daughter sacrificed to the only revolution they know.
In a first initiative of its kind anywhere in areas affected by left-wing extremism (LWE) across the country, police and district administration in Jharkhand’s Simdega district held a meet involving families of Maoist cadres and victims of LWE violence. Apart from senior officials of the police, administration and the CRPF, the meeting was also attended by MLAs, elected representatives from the villages, blocks and zila parishads.
Centred around the theme “Ugravad se kya khoya, kya paaya (What did we gain or lose due to extremism)”, the meet was aimed at creating awareness among the “misguided” people to return to the mainstream. While nearly hundred immediate relatives of victims across Simdega attended the meet, more than a dozen close relatives — including wife and mother of a PLFI sub-zonal commander Ramu Ganjhu — were present at the event. Family of another sub-zonal commander, Santosh Bhokta, also assured that they will appeal to Maoists to lay down arms.
Speaking to The Indian Express, Simdega SP Rajiv Ranjan Singh said: “As far as we know, this is the first initiative of such kind in an LWE area anywhere in the country. We need to make people realise that whether they are on this side or that, they end up being victims.”
The preparation for the event began three months ago. “We had to identify the victims …Then, we had to trace them. Further, the difficult part was finding and convincing the family members of the Maoist cadres…They needed a lot of assurance that nothing bad would happen to them,” the SP said.
Referring to the July surrender of Special Area Committee member Balkeshwar Oraon and others in his address, Singh said: “It is only in a democracy that the DGP of a state hugs a man, accused of killing some 50 people, including a few policemen, and provides for his rehabilitation.” Simdega Deputy Commissioner Vijay Kumar Singh told the gathering that, out of the 86 cases, at least 27 dependents of the victims’ families had already got jobs, while recommendations for another 48 had been made.
IG (CRPF) Sanjay Anand said: “We are expecting that such a meet would have a deep impact as far as creating awareness against violence is concerned. The manner in which people were openly speaking up against this kind of violence indicates that those involved in these operations have lost credibility on the ground.”
Extending his complete support for such initiatives, JMM MLA Poulus Sureen from Torpa (in Khunti, a major Maoist-affected district), said after the meeting: “I feel this is the first real initiative with regard to weaning away people from violence. This should be replicated in all districts.”
Simdega’s BJP MLA Vimla Pradhan said: “Government has devised a good surrender policy. But, if they (administration) remain lax in implementation, people will lose faith. It was for the first time that I got to know about the problems of families from both the sides.” See more photos:
see also
Report of Fact Finding Team of Editors Guild of India on attacks on media in Bastar (Chhattisgarh)
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Report of Fact Finding Team of Editors Guild of India on attacks on media in Bastar (Chhattisgarh)
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