Morpalli, Taadmetla and Tamipuram are villages in Sukma district of Chattisgarh. Earlier they were in Dantewada. For most people Dantewada is the so-called “liberated” Maoist zone where the Maoists had launched their biggest attack on security forces killing 76 soldiers in 2010.
In April this year, the National Human Rights Commission for the first time decided to send two members of the Commission to conduct an independent assessment of the situation there and hearings of alleged extra-judicial killings also called “fake encounters”. The Ministry of Home Affairs requested the Commission not to go. The Commission, however, went ahead. The state government too said it wouldn’t be possible for the members to go that far. The farthest was Tamipuram almost 200kilometres from Dantewada though they would have travelled by chopper. The Director General of Police agreed to arrange a chopper, but said 1500 police personnel would have to be engaged. That would be suicidal and defeat the purpose of the Commission. So the plan had to be shelved and wherever they went beyond Dantewada, there was more police presence than anything else. Their assessment: outside town limits the writ of the government ran only on the roads with both sides barricaded by security forces.
The event did not make it to most media space. A couple of newspapers reported the proposed visit but failed to follow-up on the assessment. NHRC for good or bad reasons is not a media favourite and most editors dismiss stories around NHRC. The story here though, was the inability of the Commission to reach where they wanted and the reluctance of the state and Central government to even make arrangements for their visit. Clearly, the Maoist hold on their “liberated zone” seems more real than ever.
Unable to reach the heart of Sukma and Dantewada, the Commission sent word through groups like People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) - active in Maoist territory - to hear out victims. But nobody turned up. Some 50 state-sponsored victims of Maoist violence were produced but none from the list of victims of state terror. The Raipur hearings were much the same.
The Commission then spoke to the jail inmates at Jagdalpur where several under-trials claimed they were picked up on charges of being Maoist sympathisers. Their story is perhaps one of providing food and shelter under Maoist threat. The Commission also came across one woman with 150 charges of which she has been exonerated of a 100. They were told that she was a Maoist commander.
The subtext of Dantewada and its surrounding “liberated zone” is one in which the more deprived of the deprived had turned against their own people and the government and its forces have virtually surrendered. But in order to implement the Supreme Court order to reconstruct schools in the area, the government has constructed residential schools near camps of security persons which serves two purposes - ensures attendance since the students are not at home and weans them away from Maoist influence. But children as young as 5 years of age are also being taken away, resulting in an unprecedented migration of children. Further, the children who decide to stay back at home will be denied education because the villages will not have any schools.
It is unfortunate that there is no reasonable plan in place to address any of the issues plaguing the road to Dantewada. It is even more unfortunate that agencies such as the NHRC can do very little to impact any change. However, the media which can make a difference is absent on the ground and wouldn’t spare any space for such stories any longer. Therefore, the tribal population inhabiting the land will continue to be seen as part of the problem. We do not have either the space or the time for their problems.
