Wife of Murdered Bastar Villager Denies Naming Nandini Sundar and Others in FIR
In what may be an
embarrassing situation for the Chhattisgarh police, Vimala Baghel, the wife
of adivasi villager Shamnath Baghel killed last week by the Maoists,
has denied having any named anyone in
her statement on the basis of which the police had filed a first information
report (FIR) against Delhi University professor Nandini Sundar, JNU professor
Archana Prasad and others.
In an interview to
NDTV, she said that she did not recognise any of the attackers. While saying
that an armed group attacked her husband on the night of 4 November, she said
that she could not identify anyone. Villagers of Bastar’s Nama village, where
the murder happened, also told NDTV that the Chhattisgarh police had
instructed them not to talk to the media and people who came from outside.
The murder of Baghel
shot to national attention when S.R.P. Kalluri, inspector-general of police,
Bastar range, told the media a few days ago
that it had charged Nandini Sundar and Archana Prasad, political activists
Vineet Tiwari and Sanjay Parate, Bastar-based adivasi activists Manju
Kawasi and Mangalram Karma and 14 others for the murder of Baghel and other
grave crimes like inciting violence.
The charges against
eminent academics and political activists came as a shock to most civil society
members, who saw the police action as vindictive and
as an attempt by the police to vilify and silence critics of human rights
violations in the state. Sundar and other activists named in the FIR have been
at the forefront of documenting police excesses in the adivasi-dominated
Bastar region for more than a decade. In May this year, Sundar and the
others had gone to Nama village and other areas of Bastar as part of a
fact-finding team to enquire into various reports of fake encounters, rapes,
custodial torture and deaths that came out of the region. The fact-finding team
later produced a report which was critical of the
role of police in Bastar, and the Maoists, while detailing how the police has
been acting against adivasi interests in the region.
Since then, the Bastar
police have been using direct and indirect pressure tactics to silence Sundar
and her team, her lawyers alleged in an affidavit to the Supreme Court on
Friday. In an unprecedented step, the CG police wrote letters to the
vice-chancellors of Delhi University and Jawaharlal Nehru University – where
Sundar and Prasad worked – to inform the varsities that it had started an
investigation against them for trying to instigate the villagers against
police. Last month, the Bastar police courted controversy by organising
various dharnas in which it burnt effigies of Sundar and other activists.
In the meantime, because of Sundar’s legal intervention, the Central Bureau of
Investigation accepted in front of the Supreme Court that it has filed a charge
sheet against the CG police and state-sponsored armed auxiliary forces forburning down three adivasi villages in
2011.
Responding to the CBI charge sheet, Kalluri had said that he had directed
the operation, claimed that the CBI was lying and accused Sundar
of bribing the villagers to lie. His response contradicts his own statement in 2011, when
he had claimed that Maoists had burnt down the three villages in question.
The charges for murder
against human rights defenders is being seen by civil society
critics as part of the CG police’s continuing attacks on democratic
voices. This is not the first time Sundar has been targeted by CG police.
Although the charges against her are more severe this time around, she has been detained,
questioned and unduly harassedinnumerable times in the past.
However, Vimala
Baghel’s statement to NDTV marks a new shift in the ongoing battle between
activists and the CG police. While it validates what civil society members have
been saying about the highhandedness of Bastar police, especially Kalluri,
it also puts the BJP-led state government in the dock. Activists, both within
and outside Bastar, have always maintained that Kalluri’s extra-judicial
actions cannot be seen as only his own and that the Raman Singh government,
which has backed him for many years now also needs to share the blame.
Speaking to The
Wire, Swami Agnivesh, prominent human rights activist, said, “I was
assaulted murderously by Kalluri’s special police officers (members of the
banned vigilante group Salwa Judum) in 2011 when I tried visiting the villages
which were burnt down by the security forces. I complained to the chief
minister against Kalluri who was the SSP of Dantewada. He immediately
transferred him to Sarguja but only to bring him back as the inspector-general.
Now he reigns supreme in all the seven districts of Bastar. He works with a
kind of impunity that probably no other police officer enjoys.” Agnivesh was
appointed as an interlocutor by the-then home minister P.Chidambaram to
initiate a dialogue between the state and the Maoists.
Support for Sundar
and others: Meanwhile, support
for the academics and political activists has poured in from all over the
world. A large section of the academic community and political activists have
been demanding the withdrawal of all charges against Sundar and others. At the
same time, they have also demanded that immediate action be taken against
Kalluri. Several organisations under different banners held demonstrations
across India. .. read more:
