Gattepalli

Naxals Kill Three in Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli for Working as ‘Police Informers’

The villagers claim this was a “warning message” sent out to prevent them from working for the police in the future.

Mumbai: On April 22, 2018, the Maharashtra state police killed 40 persons, including several teenage boys and girls, in Kasansur village of Gadchiroli district in Maharashtra, on the basis that they were “armed rebels” of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist).

Nine months later, on January 21, the Naxals “retaliated” and killed three persons in Kasansur for allegedly working as “police informers”.

Calling it “retaliatory action”, the Naxals have reportedly taken responsibility of killing the three – Maalu Dogge Madavi, Kannu Rainu Madavi and Lalsu Kudyetti – on the intervening night of January 21 and 22.

The three, all in their mid-30s, along with six other villagers were allegedly summoned into the forest, a few kilometres outside the village on January 21. While the three persons were shot dead, the rest were allowed to return on the condition that they get everyone to vacate the village immediately.

The Naxals left behind handwritten papers next to each body and a red banner with a message stating:

“On April 22, 2018, in Kasansur-Tumingunda incident, 40 of our beloved comrades were killed by the police. These three men worked as police informers and we have given them a death sentence as a punishment for their crime.”

The banner has been undersigned by the ‘South Gadchiroli Division Committee’.

Also read: One of 40 ‘Naxals’ Killed in ‘Encounter’ Was Child, Say Villagers, 7 More Missing

The locals have confirmed that on January 21, the Naxals had summoned the three deceased persons, along with six others to a deserted spot. “They had come in large numbers. They let go of the six others but asked Maalu, Kannu and Lalsu to stay back. They asked the six others to return to the village and vacate the houses. A few hours later, the bodies of the three persons were found lying few kilometres away from the village on the Bhamragad-Allapalli road,” said one of the villagers.

This act has left the villagers horrified and they claim it was a “warning message” sent out to prevent them from working for the police in the future.

As a practice, the Naxal leaders usually call for a “Jan Sunvai (public court)” every time they sense the villagers are not abiding by their orders. In this case, a villager said, no such Jan Sunvai was organised. “It appears the Maoists were quite sure of the role played by the deceased persons. These men along with the six others were summoned, and without any conversation, were punished (killed),” a villager told The Wire.

Villagers of Gattepalli recognise a 16-year who was killed in Gadchiroli last April. Credit: File photo/Sukanya Shantha/The Wire

Kasansur is a remote village situated in a dense forest in the border district of Gadchiroli. Only 32 families – all belonging to the Madiya tribe – live here. The river Indrawati passes through the village and on crossing the river, one enters into Bijapur district of neighbouring Chattisgarh. Both districts are Naxal-affected and have witnessed several bloodied exchanges between the armed rebels and the police.

The villagers confirmed that since the attack on January 21, they have taken shelter in the Tadgaon armed outpost of Bhamragad police station. “Over 160 villagers have moved to the police station. Even those six persons who were abducted and later released are at the police station,” confirmed advocate Lalsu Soma Nagoti, a Zilla Parishad member.

Credit: Ita Mehrotra

The bodies have been sent for post-mortem and will be handed over to the families only after all the formalities are concluded. A senior police official said the security of other family members is their prime concern. “We are ensuring that others are safe. They are all panicked. Once things have settled, we will be questioning the six others and find out more details about the attack,” a senior police official handling the anti-Naxal operations, said.

On April 22, last year, the district police’s C-60 commandos (the Maharashtra police’s special anti-Naxal unit) claimed to have carried out two “successful ambush [operations],” which were planned and executed at Kasansur, where 34 people were killed, and a day later at the nearby Rajaram-Khandla forest, where six more were killed.

Three crucial commandos of the Naxal groups – Sainath alias Dolesh Madhi Atram (32), the alleged commander of Permelli Dalam (who, according to the police, was recently elevated as the divisional committee member) from Gattepalli, division committee (popularly known as ‘DVC’), rank-level member Naxal Srinu alias Srinath, and Nandu – were among those killed in the ambush. Besides them, six were assistant commandants, four party committee members and rest were party members.

When The Wire visited Gatepalli village five days after the incident, it was found that most people among the deceased were, in fact, school- going children. Some children were as young as 13. They, according to the villagers, had travelled from Gattepalli – a tiny hamlet in Gadchiroli – to Kasansur village for a wedding.

Also read: Were There Civilians Among ‘Naxals’ Killed in the Gadchiroli ‘Encounter’?

At Kasansur, talking to The Wire soon after the incident, the villagers said the marriage had saved the villagers from police firing. “When they [Naxals] summon us, we have to oblige. There is no choice. That morning too, we were called. But as we were getting ready for a wedding ceremony in the village; we were exempted. The wedding saved our lives,” one of the villagers, Lachchu Matte Wadavi, told this reporter on April 27, last year.

The Gattepalli villagers had complained of police excess and alleged that the children were wrongly targeted. The police claimed that the wedding was just a cover and the young boys and girls were, in fact, fresh recruits. However, the police were unable to establish how school-going children could have participated in an armed movement.

Gadchiroli’s Adivasis Remember Their Dead – The Maoists Killed, And Those They Slew

Those deemed Maoists are officially persona non grata for the state. However, the villages to which they belong do not wish to erase them from memory.

Gadchiroli (Maharashtra): They are a number, the number 40: Forty Maoists killed, 40 terrorists killed or 40 ‘martyrs’ killed. They are ‘rakshas’ (demons), they are ‘supreme anti-nationals’, they are a heap of decomposed, bloated bodies wrapped in polythene sheets at Gadchiroli police station. But for their families and the community, there’s a different memory.

About a month after the encounter in which they were killed, a large gathering took place at the site, where one member from each family and people from neighbouring villages attended a ceremony called the ‘mirsum’ , that is held to help release the spirit of those killed unnaturally, or those who committed suicide. The smaller ceremonies took place in the villages of the deceased when the bodies were returned to the families and were buried in a ‘gumiya’ where the belongings of the departed are placed around the grave: from clothes, to vessels, to even their bicycles, chairs, khatiyas or clocks.

The Madia Gond of Gadchiroli often place objects closely associated with the departed on their graves.

The Wire toured eight villages and met the families of those killed in the recent ‘encounter’, as well as the silent victims of Maoist violence. All were local Madia adivasis: of the 40 killed, only a handful were from Chhattisgarh, while one hailed from Warangal. The majority were from Bamragad and Etappali.

A universal pattern across families of known Maoists was that the police would often urge family members to talk their children or brother or sister to surrender to the police. The universal pattern for those who joined the C-60 (a specialised combat unit of the Gadchiroli police) is that the Maoists would ask them to leave the village, or tell them to leave the police. The killings of informants is not seen from the spectrum of daily conversation. ‘Chugli’ is a popular word that exists almost as a parenthesis to conversation: it means ‘backbiter’ in Urdu. There isn’t a Gondi word for ‘informant’. Another word used in Gadchiroli is khabari, or informer, which might as well connote a death sentence.

The villagers in Boria are exhausted with how their village has became ‘ground zero’ for the killings, its aftermath, and its carnival. They speak irritatingly about how the police forced them to retrieve the bodies from the river, paid them Rs 9,000, and installed a hand pump, which, true to the classic trope of Indian administration, has already stopped working.

They took 15 bodies out of the river on April 24, out of which four were women in civil dress, two were men in civil dress and nine were in the combatant uniform of the Maoists. They found two bodies on April 26, both in uniform, and finally on April 27, a half-burnt body of a woman in uniform, deep inside the forest.

Some of the bodies were in such a decomposed and mutilated state that the villagers weren’t even sure of the gender. “One man carrying a body from this end, says it’s a man, the other carrying the body from the other end, says it’s a woman,” a villager recalled.

The police had camped out at the village from April 22 till May 8. Then came the fact-finding teams, journalists and even the victims of Naxal violence who protested in the village.

Who are the people who perished in this historic ‘victory’, ‘flawless operation’, his ‘perfect ambush’, ‘massacre’, this ‘biggest Maoist encounter?’ And who are the others, whose deaths will not be marked by the village they were killed in?

Pali Walle Mahaka alias Radha of village Nelgunda, Bamragad, Gadchiroli district who was killed by the police on April 22 in the Kasansur-Boria ambush.

When asked where his aunt is, Pali’s nephew Krishna, who is four years old, says, ‘Dolta’. Dolta means dead.

Pali was the second child of her parents. She has two younger brothers, and an elder sister and is the first person ‘martyred’ in the village of Nelgunda, Bamragad. The villagers of Nelgunda have faced police harassment twice in recent years, once when over 60 of them were beaten on the orders of a sub-inspector at Dodhraj police station for not taking permission to hold a ‘bazaar’, and the second time when they were taken at gunpoint to demolish a Maoist memorial.

“Why should we seek permission to hold our bazaars when they don’t have to do so in Bamragad” the village gaita, or elder, said.

The police had approached Pali’s mother Koli twice, asking her to convince her daughter to surrender. Pali’s brothers, her nephew and her mother were present during the interview. The adults were told the story that Pali had managed to escape the initial firing and was emerging out of the river on the other side when she was shot in the back.

Asked why Pali joined the party, Koli said, “When she was young, she didn’t want to get married, so she left. But even when we said she didn’t have to marry and she can come back, she didn’t do so. She would visit the village occasionally, but hadn’t in the last year. Each time she left, she told her mother “If I am alive, I will come, if I don’t come, I’m dead.”

On what she thought of the police terming her daughter as a ‘dangerous criminal’, a rakshas ,she said wistfully,”She wasn’t, she was good to people, even the other party people said they liked her. “Don’t fight with one another, don’t drink,” she would tell her younger brothers. She was exceptionally fond of Krishna, her nephew, with whom she would spend most of her time.

How did Koli feel about the ‘khabari’ responsible for the ‘encounter’ that took her daughter’s life? She murmurs, “Someone must’ve said where they were…whatever justice the sarkar decides on. Hum ko kuch maloom nahi (I don’t know anything).”

Koli goes quiet when asked if there is anything she wanted want to tell the state, the police, the government, the people who were responsible for her daughter’s death. After a pause, she said, “The police do the same work, the Naxals do the same work. They take up guns, and they kill each other… thoda unko vichar sochna chahiye, nahi sochte (They should introspect. They don’t). They shouldn’t kill each other.”

Bhuji, Raaso, Mangesh, Irpa, Anita, Mangesh, Nusse, Raaso, (Bhuji’s photo is not included) village Gattepalli, Bamragad block. Killed or missing after the April 22 Kasansur-Boria ‘encounter’

Two months after the April 22 encounter, the villagers of Gattepalli still have no clear idea about what happened to the eight teenagers from their village. They are ‘lapata’ (missing), they say when asked publicly, but in private they know that all of them were killed in Kasansur-Boria. They have even conducted the mirsum. The bodies of the teenagers were buried by the Gadchiroli police itself. As of June 1, over 18 bodies were unidentified but not returned to the families, as the official DNA results were pending.

According to a report in The Wire, a young woman identified as Raaso, was eventually identified as Bhuji. “When they first saw the photo of the dead body, they thought it was Raaso, but when they went to the police station, they realised it was Bhuji,” said Lalsu Narote, advocate and independent zilla parishad member, who has been closely following up on the village of Gattepalli and is active in seeking answers from the government.

Bhuji’s body was in such a decomposed state that the villagers didn’t bring it back to the village.

In all the villages this reporter toured in Bamragad-Etapalli, almost all the older women and men had Madia adivasi names, like Wadde, Dalsu, Pili, while the younger people had clearly Sanskritised names. The only village where that wasn’t the case was Gattepalli, where of the eight killed, five had adivasi names and were all from the ages 15 to 23, at different levels of schooling.

The villagers all stick to their story that the children went for a wedding, denying completely the police claim that they were new recruits to the party, recruited by one of those killed, Sainath.

Bhuji, on a neighbour’s phone.

“His father died, and he went into the forest.” That was all Dolesh’s mother says about him. Then his friends and neighbours, his childhood pals begin to tell his story. He was barely 15 or 16 when he joined the Maoists. He was an only child, and had studied until 7th standard. When his body was returned to Gattepalli, his burial was conducted without checking his injuries. “We saw his face and buried him,” said villagers.

At this stage, a man interrupted and said, “He went inside (the party) because of police harassment. There was a firing at Kasimpalli and the police had called him to the police station. They accused him, saying that the injured Maoists were getting treatment in his house, that the doctor was coming there. It was the tendu season, we remember. They beat him up, slapped a case on him as well. He was alone in his home, he had no one, jamanat karne ke liye koi nahi tha, toh woh jungle chala gaya (there was no one to bail him out. So he left for the jungle).”

In the 15 years and more that would follow, Dolesh would become Sainath. He would become a divisional committee member in the South Gadchiroli division and one of the ‘top three Maoists’ killed in the Kasansur-Boria ‘encounter’, along with Nandu from Arkampalli and Srinu from Warangal. Across the region, the name ‘Sainath’ was well-known, at times infamous. He was accused no.1 in the burning of the 80 trucks and JCBs on the Surjagad mountain. And his cousin, Irpa Usendi, who worked as a contractor at the site was made accused no.2 in the case by the police before he was killed by the CPI-Maoists, legend says, by Sainath himself.

According to police releases, Sainath was accused in over 70 cases of murder, extortion, arson, etc. (If one looks at the data from the South Asia Terrorism Portal, from 2004-2017, 160 civilians and 144 jawans were killed in Gadchiroli.)

Dolesh’s mother wanted him to surrender but he never agreed to it. “Woh nahi sunta tha, (He wouldn’t listen to her),” Birsu Atram said. Birsu was shot in the hand by the CRPF in 2015 while he was riding his motorcycle back home after dark. He was the first person from his village who had bought himself a motorcycle.

On April 19 , 2016, an encounter had taken place near Kudkeli where Keku Kovasi, alias Sarita, was shot dead by the police. She was a member of the Perimilli dalam and was married to Sainath.

“We will build Dolesh a memorial, as well as for everyone else,” said one of his friends.

Lalsu Kundi Atram, (40), village Bejur, Bamragad Block. Accused of being an informant, he was killed by Maoists on April 5, 2017.

Sainath himself came to kill Lalsu. He was brutally beaten with sticks in front of the whole village and then they took stones and smashed his face in. There was no warning before the killing, which was a deviation from what is apparently standard operating procedure among Maoists. They give repeated warnings to those accused of working with the state. Lalsu got none.

It was the day of the maka-jatra, the mango festival, and many people from neighbouring villages were present. A small squad of a five Maoists led by Sainath entered the village late in the evening while Lalsu was resting on his cot at home. While they were dragging him away, his brother tried to stop them. “When I asked them where they’re taking him, what wrong has he done, Sainath said why are you asking, you’re not going to see him again anyway,” his brother said.

The villagers themselves had to take Lalsu’s body to Bamragad and file an FIR. No local media came to the village, no official.

Lalsu was a farmer, and used to run the public distribution system in the village. “He was innocent,” said a local activist, adding “he was my senior in school, we knew he wasn’t involved with all this.”

A month later, when his elder brother Narango Kundi Atram confronted the Maoists on why they killed his brother, they beat him up.

When the villagers conducted the mirsum, people from neighbouring villages, and even from the home of a known-Maoist attended the ceremony.

Rukhmati Devu Dhurve, village Bejur, Bamragad block. Killed by the police on April 22, Kasansur-Boria ambush.

“So many people are fighting in the world. She did not go into the jungle to fight just for us, she went to fight for everyone, for the whole world.” said Devu, Rukhmati’s father, while putting one of his grandchildren to sleep.

The police had sent him a letter informing him that his daughter was dead and he should come to the Gadchiroli police station. But they did not show him her body, just took his blood for the DNA tests. They showed them photos of the dead bodies on the computer but couldn’t identify her. Rukhmati was 16-17 years old when she went into the forests. She was one among three sisters and two brothers. The reasons for her going to the jungles were closely linked to internal village dynamics: Devu and his family were accused of ‘black magic’, were ostracised and forced to leave the village and lived at the outskirts. There was a virtual social boycott of the family, no one was to work in their fields, or visit their house. ‘They wouldn’t even want our animals to graze near their animals,” Devu said. Four-five years ago, the Maoists sorted this out, and it was again Sainath whose role was central, this time as arbitrator.

Devu Dhurve, the father of Rukhmati of village Bejur. Rukhmati had joined the Maoists after her father was socially ostracised on the rumour that he was practicing ‘black magic’.

After the killings of both Rukhmati and Sainath, the family hasn’t faced any ill-will or a return of the boycott. ‘This girl here, her baby niece used to follow her back into the jungle whenever she came, and she had to be sent back,” Devu laughs.

The family found out that Rukhmati was killed a month after the encounter. Earlier, they used to get a letter from her saying she was alive and well. After the recent encounter, no letter arrived and the family began to worry. They had met her a week before the encounter, when she came to check on the family and told them not to come into the forest, as the Maoists had set up camp there.

When asked if Rukhmati was part of the squad that killed Lalsu, Devu replied in the negative. “She worked well for the people, let her enemies say what they want, she didn’t fight with anyone, she made no enemies”, he added.

Mahari Dallu Wadde alias Lata (and Nandu from Arkanpalli), Village Mirgudwancha, Bamragad, Gadchiroli district. Killed by the police on the April 23, 2018.

“We know Mahari wasn’t killed on the 22nd, she was taken by the police along with Nandu and killed elsewhere,” said the villagers and her family members at Mirgudwancha.

Reports and accusations have come in that Nandu, ‘Lata’ and other Maoists were captured alive from Kasansur-Boria and were killed a day later in an encounter at Rajaram Khandla after being forced by the police to reveal nearby Maoist caches. This belief has been strengthened by accusations from Nandu’s family at Arkampalli claiming that a villager got a call from the Gadchiroli police station saying that Nandu had been captured. Then, a day later, they were told he was killed at Rajaram Khandla.

In Lata’s village, people speak about how she ‘ran out of bullets and surrendered,’ how they ‘took her to Aheri and tortured her.’ The day The Wire visited the village, a wedding was on between a boy from Mirgudwancha and a girl from Gattepalli. Villagers from Gattepalli whom we met a day earlier joined us again in the house of Mahari.

Lata had studied till the 7th standard and had gone underground more than 15 years ago, in 2003, when she joined the cultural wing of the CPI-Maoist, the Chetna Natya Manch and eventually rose in the party ranks. She married Nandu alias Vikram alias Vasant Atram from Arkampalli, whose death has been celebrated by the police as a ‘top catch’. The villagers of Mirgudwancha carried mud from their village to Nandu’s gumiya.

Dallu and Muri, the parents of Mahari Dallu Wadde alias Lata. According to the villagers of Mirgudwancha, she was killed a day after the Kasansur-Boria encounter at Nainer. They alleged she was captured and tortured before being killed.

‘She used to come to the village and tell people, to understand the party’s niyam, not to fight with each other, to be careful about politicians…jal, jungle, jameen, that we are a very rich country and we should protect it.”

The police would repeatedly ask her parents, Dallu and Muri, to ask her to surrender but Lata refused to do so. She told them to protect her younger brother, to teach him how to work the fields.

“What would you like to tell the police and the state about your daughter?” I asked Dallu. “I don’t understand these things, so what can I say? She used to be in school, she used to help people a lot in the village,” he said.

Suresh Linga Telami, Kushnar village, Bamragad. Killed in a Maoist IED blast on May 4, 2017.

“He didn’t even tell us he joined the C-60,” said Linga, Suresh’s father. The village of Kushnar is just around a kilometre away from Mirgudwancha. The route to the village has a large memorial coloured in the tiranga (tricolour) in memory of Suresh Linga Telami, the first person from the village to die as either a policeman or Maoist in this low-intensity insurgency and low-intensity democracy. Suresh was killed when his anti-landmine vehicle was hit by an improvised explosive device on a road close to Bamragad, near the village of Kier. He lost his foot and bled to death. He was only 28 years old, and left behind four sisters, a wife and a son.

“They sent a man on a motorbike to come and tell us he had been killed,” said his family membes.

Suresh was studying in Aheri and after his BA second year he enrolled with the police, the only person from his village to do so. He married a year later. ‘The Maoists called us twice and told us to tell him to leave the C-60. Told us to leave the village after he joined the C-60. What do we tell them? If we speak up, it’s wrong, if we don’t it’s wrong,” said Linga.

“We did his mirsum at the blast site, there were people from Karampalli, Hemalkasa, Kier, our village Kushnar, some 25-30 people. Villagers support us, if Naxals die, they help, if police die we help, we have no problems with them, we attend ceremonies, weddings, deaths, we can only work together,” he said, adding “Why would I be angry that he went into the police? Yes, if he wasn’t in the police, he might’ve lived longer.”

Suresh’s family wasn’t used to people visitng their home, neither local journalists nor officials. While state policy encourages the public memory of policemen and women killed in Maoist violence, and you find their portraits at bus stations, at the Gadchiroli sessions court, outside the collector’s office, at the police station, on the Gadchiroli district website, there are almost no visits from anyone to the homes of the victims of Maoist violence. It is the families who’re asked to attend events, memorials, press conferences in other areas.

“We were called once for Ambrishrao Atram’s (incumbent BJP MLA, from Aheri) event,” said Suresh’s brother-in-law.

When asked who he thinks would be able to save the jungle and adivasi culture, the state or the adivasis. he says,” ‘Only we can.”

Mina ‘Bali’ Ramji Madavi, alias Anitha, village Karampalli, Bamragad. Killed by the police on April 22, Kasansur-Boria ambush.

“What am I going to do with this photo of hers on the Aadhaar?’”says Mina’s mother. “I remember her when I see it,” say said, adding that the only photo of hers they have is the one on her Aadhaar card, where her date of birth is marked as 1995.

Mina was the oldest of three daughters and had studied till the 10th standard and was home for three years after that. She met a boy from her mother’s maternal village of Karkawada in Bhopalpatnam in a wedding and fell in love with him. She left to stay in his home at Karkawada in a live-in relationship for two years. It was from his village that she joined the Maoists.

“He started working in some company,” her mother said, adding “she went to the party after that. We don’t know anything else.”

Mina would meet her mother and father and two sisters only once in six years . They were called across the Indravati river to meet her, where “her father just scolded her, and she didn’t respond at all.”

Three generations of Mina’s family sit in the hot summer sun, her grandmother, her younger sister who barely remembers her and her mother and look at her photo: this is an old photo, they say, it must have been taken when she first went into the jungle. ‘The police told us thrice to ask her to surrender, but she never came home. “Ladai mein police bhi marta hai, naxal bhi marta hai ( In this fight, the police gets killed and so do the Naxals)“, said the family.

Anitha’s gumiya.

All images by Javed Iqbal.

Javed Iqbal is a freelance reporter and photographer.

Gadchiroli ‘Naxal’ Encounter: The Wedding That Saved a Village

In the ‘war’ between those identified as Naxals and the police that has lasted years in Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli district, more often than not, it is the locals who end up as collateral damage. But this time, a few managed to cheat death.

This is the second article in a two-part series on the aftermath of the reported killings of 40 ‘Naxals’ in Gadchiroli, Maharashtra. You can read the first article here.

Gadchiroli district (Maharashtra): It was a wedding that saved the residents of Kasansur village in Gadchiroli from being killed or injured in the ambush set by the police’s C-60 commandos on the morning of April 22.

The “encounter” between alleged Naxals camping outside the village and the police left 34 “Naxals” dead. If not for the wedding, the village’s young men and women would have been where the Naxals were camping on the banks of Indrawati river when the alleged encounter took place. “When they (Naxals) summon us, we have to oblige. There is no choice. That morning too, we were called. But as we were getting ready for a wedding ceremony in the village, we were exempted. The wedding saved our lives,” said 35- year old Lachchu Matte Wadavi.

It’s a miracle, they all agree.

But though they are safe this time round, the dilemma the villagers of Kasansur face is fairly typical of how life is, and has been like, for decades in Maharashtra’s Vidarbha region, especially within the forest range of Gadchiroli, under a constant threat from both the police and the Naxals.

Tucked in the remotest parts of the dense forest, where they eke out a living picking Tendu leaves, the villagers here have very little access to the outside world, making their lives very vulnerable. Human rights violations have been recorded from time to time, both at the hands of the state and the armed rebels. Several locals that The Wire spoke to described the hardship they suffer regularly. Despite the severity of the situation, no respite seems to be in sight.

In the wee hours of April 22, Naxals gathered close to the village had sent a message asking the villagers to participate in the meeting. Such meetings, they say from their earlier experiences, are arranged each time a leader camps in and around the village to discuss issues that affect them. “They are benign; they don’t threaten us. They only ask us to be present and share our grievances,” said an elderly woman in Madiya, the local tribal language, as her son translated it into Marathi.

But, she said, the whole idea of going and meeting them is daunting. “As it is, the police look at us as supporters of the movement. And then to attend the meetings puts us in a spot,” she added. Another villager, Mangu Kudme added, “If we turn down the summons, that act is looked at as betrayal.” There have been instances of Naxal groups gunning down villagers for ‘betraying’ them.

Credit: Ita Mehrotra

Kasansur village has been making headlines for the past week since the police shot down 34 people they claimed to be “dreaded Naxals”. It has now emerged that at least eight of them killed or injured in the ambush were teenage boys and girls from nearby Gattepalli, who had apparently set out to attend this very wedding.

This sleepy village is not new to the police’s presence or Naxal activities. A few men from the village joined the arms movement several years ago. It takes a little over two hour bike-ride through dense forest from Bhamragad division of Gadchiroli on a mud road to reach here and the uneven pathway makes the journey accident-prone. Spread on a large expanse of forest land, Kasansur is home to 32 families, all belonging to the Madiya tribe.

The presence of armed commandos, gunshots, sudden raids and cordoning off of the area is a way of life in this region. Every village in the area has at least one instance to quote of extrajudicial killings or a fake surrender after terming them as Naxals.

According to Gadchiroli Superintendent Abhinav Deshmukh, over 2,000 rounds of shots were fired at the “Naxals” hiding here on April 22. The villagers claimed the figure is not even half as much as they heard that morning. “It felt like crackers were bursting for over six hours,” a resident told us.
That evening, the commandos were seen drinking and dancing to Hindi and Marathi songs celebrating their “success”.

Kasansur and the adjacent Boriya village share the banks of the river Indravati. The narrow pathway from Boriya village to the river is more accessible than from Kasansur – the police therefore used the residents of the former as free labour to drag the bodies out of the river. On April 23, a day after the firing, residents from Boriya village said a search operation was launched by C-60 commandos along with the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF).

“They came in large numbers and asked us to go to the river. They asked us to drag the bodies out and lay them next to each other. In all, 17 bodies — two on the April 22 and the rest on the April 23 –bodies were brought out by the villagers,” said Ramu Gawade, a member of the local Gram Sabha. The 18th body was found on April 28, the day this correspondent was visiting.

The residents of Boriya village were forced to drag the bodies from Indravati river. In all 34 ‘Naxals’ were killed on April 22. Credit: Sukanya Shantha/The Wire

The river is infested with crocodiles and Gawade said this made the search operation difficult. “We had no idea how many bodies were there. We kept diving in and dragging bodies out one after the other. Several bodies were severed and had been eaten by the crocodiles.”

The villagers claim to have protested against the police’s demand to fish out the bodies. “It is terrible thing to look for dead bodies in the water we use every day. When we said we can’t do this work, they threatened us. Some of us had to give in,” a villager identifying himself as Raju, said. Gawade alleged that one of the two bodies he had dragged was of a “young girl” and was found without any clothes. “Her face and head had bullet wounds. The body had no clothes. This was the only body found without clothes,” Gawade claimed.

On April 28, when The Wire visited Boriya, some villagers had got into an argument with the police. Eventually they succeeded in defying the police’s order and refused to participate in the search operation any further.

Since the attack, the village has been converted into a camping area for the C-60 commandos and CRPF. Helicopters hover around the village, keeping a close eye on who enters and leaves the village. These helicopters, the villagers claim, were also used to carry a few reporters, who had travelled with the police from Nagpur. “They came with the police and left with them. They did not stop by at the village to ask us what has been happening here for years,” 45- year old Matte Wadavi told us.

While this reporter was conversing with the villagers inside the Ghotul – a central space where all important discussions are held and decisions taken, the commandos walked in to inquire her presence in the village. A commando who identified himself as PSI Dhabade insisted on participating in the discussion. The villagers dispersed in no time. Dhabade and other officers prevented this reporter and the local zilla parishad representative Lalsu Soma Nagoti – who had helped arrange the visit – from travelling further into to forest. “This is a protected area and outsiders can’t be allowed in,” he announced.

Intelligence from within the Naxals?

The police claimed to have carried out a “perfect ambush” due to the well-coordinated intelligence inputs that was received a day before the killings. This information, sources in the state intelligence department claim, came from within the Naxal groups.

“It was an internal sabotage. We had received information on April 20 about the camp and about the presence of high ranking ultras. Around 120 commandos entered the area from Pengunda village in Bijapur district, Chattisgarh,” the official told The Wire. In the morning, when the Naxals had gathered for breakfast and had supposedly kept their guns aside, the commandos allegedly launched the attack. “The commandos were on a higher plain. That helped them in precise attacks. Sixteen people were killed at the spot, the rest, mostly injured, jumped into the river,” an officer from Gadchiroli’s Anti-Naxal Operation squad claimed.

Kasansur village. Credit: Sukanya Shantha/The Wire

Three crucial commandos of the Naxal groups – Sainath alias Dolesh Madhi Atram (32), the alleged commander of Permelli Dalam (who, according to the police, was recently elevated as the divisional committee member) from Gattepalli, division committee (popularly known as ‘DVC’) rank level member Naxal Srinu alias Srinath, and Nandu – were among those killed in the ambush. While the first two were killed at Indravati river, Nandu and five others were shown as killed at a nearby Kapewancha area in Rajaram Khandla forest on April 23.

According to the police, a similar situation arose the next day when Nandu and five others were allegedly hiding in Jimalgatta village in Aheri Taluka, around 100 kilometres from where the initial encounter occurred. These six “Naxals” too were allegedly armed but were caught unaware when the police opened fire, according to police sources. The identities of over 20 of the 40 killed yet to be ascertained.

Questions have been raised about the Jimalgatta firing and according to testimonies gathered from a village near Kasansur, Nandu, Shrinu and Sainath had taken shelter in a village nearby a day before they were killed. The district administration has also questioned the manner in which this encounter was carried out and has ordered two separate inquires.

A 21- year man, who had apparently allowed the three to stay at his house, spoke to The Wire on the condition of anonymity. His identity and the village details have been withheld at his request. “Nandu, Shrinu and Sainath came to my place around April 21 morning and stayed over till late night. I was asked to offer them food. They slept in one room,” he told this reporter, pointing at the separate room built near his house in the village. According to him, the three men were armed. Nandu had an self-loading rifle (SLR) and the other two had carried Ak-47s. “All three had left my place late in the evening. They planned to rest at Kasansur before moving towards Bijapur the following day. I was summoned too,” he claimed. “I had some other work. Also, I was afraid to go there. So, I decided to not attend the meeting,” he added.

He further claimed to have been summoned to the spot of the firing on April 22 night to help transport a 21- year old injured girl to Bijapur. “Her head had been grazed by a bullet. She was injured, but not severely. She wore army fatigues and was unarmed. She told me her name is Munni,” he claimed. He added that he drove her for over two hours to a village in Bijapur district. “I was only given the task to leave her there. Her journey was to be completed with local help there,” he added. According to him, another person was assigned the work of transporting another Naxal who had a bullet lodged in his ankle. “I do not know where he was taken to. He was injured and in pain.”

As the example of Kasansur and other villages in Gadchirolli shows, in the ‘war’ between those identified as Naxals and therefore as enemies of the state, and the police, the locals who end up as collateral damage. Even if they are not killed, the remain vulnerable to the demands and pressure from both sides.

One of 40 ‘Naxals’ Killed in ‘Encounter’ Was Child, Say Villagers, 7 More Missing

After 40 persons were killed in an alleged encounter between the C-60 commandos and Naxals in Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli, a village waits to identify their dead even as the media smears their missing children as outlaws.

This is the first article in a two-part series on the aftermath of the reported killings of 40 ‘Naxals’ in Gadchiroli, Maharashtra.

Gattepalli (Maharashtra): For five days, the residents of Gattepalli, a tiny hamlet in Gadchiroli Maharashtra, had no idea where many of their children had disappeared after they had gone to attend a wedding in a nearby village on April 21. When the tragic news finally came, it was by accident.

“Oh, is that Raasu? But her cheeks look swollen in this picture. Look at the forehead closely, she had an exceptionally broad forehead and small eyes,” said Bisru Ataram in Madiya language as he peered – almost by chance – into the mobile phone of a visitor, advocate Lalsu Soma Nagoti.

On the evening of April 27, Ataram accidentally saw and recognised the photo of one of the children – it was 16-year-old Raasu Chacko Madavi. In shock, he immediately shared the news. The photo was part of the list of 16 people who had been killed in an encounter with the police for being suspected Naxals just a few days ago.

For Raasu’s sisters – Vanji, 20, and Jano, 18 – it was a traumatic moment as the news sank in. It was equally distressing for other villagers who had been waiting for some sort of official confirmation from the police after they had heard of the encounter.

Vanji (second from left) and Jano (centre) identify their 16-year-old sister Raasu Chacko Madavi in the picture. Credit: Sukanya Shantha/The Wire

Their worst fears had now come true.

Raasu’s picture was number five in the list issued by the police. She was classified as “an unidentified person” who had been in the alleged “encounter” on the banks of Indravati river on April 22.

Her swollen face with deep gashes on the cheeks and swollen left eye had deformed her face to a large extent. But the villagers had seen Raasu since she was a baby. They could identify that face with “broad forehead and small eyes” in no time.

In the darkness, the villagers then feverishly scrolled through the PDF page on Nagoti’s phone to see if they could spot any more familiar faces. They discussed if another picture, marked as Shavh #10 (dead body number 10) could be that of another missing teenage boy, Nusse.

But they couldn’t tell for sure. “The face is too swollen, as if the person was badly beaten. Some features match those of our son Nusse, but we can’t be sure,” Ataram said.

No official confirmation about their children’s whereabouts or deaths had come so far, barring an inquiry by C-60 commandos of the police who had visited the village following a missing persons complaint the villagers had filed with the police in nearby Gadchiroli.

The encounter

Gattepalli is a remote and tiny village in Etapalli tehsil, around 310 km from Nagpur. Like in most tribal villages in Gadchiroli region, the 35 families of Gattepalli are dependent on Tendu leaves and other forest produce for their sustenance.

Credit: Ita Mehrotra

The concrete roads slowly give way to dusty paths the closer one gets to the village. Irregular state and private bus services connect the outer world only up to Etapalli town, 66 km away. The journey beyond can be completed only on a sturdy bike and the two-hour back-breaking journey is challenging, especially at night. Given its remoteness and lack of public transport, the villagers here seldom travel to town. Only a few families here own motorcycles which are generously shared with everyone.

The teenage Rassu and seven others, none older than 21, had left home on the evening of April 21 saying they were going to Kasansur village, 15 km away, to participate in a wedding. According to advocate Nagoti, himself a Madiya, a wedding in the tribe is considered an open house of sorts-it is quite common to find uninvited guests from neighbouring villages participate in the pre-wedding ceremonies. Participation of unfamiliar faces, Nagoti says, is just as welcome as that of any relative. According to the testimonies collected from villagers in Kasansur, these eight persons never reached the marriage venue. “There is a possibility that these persons had left the village to join the wedding party but were either summoned by the Naxals camping outside the village or were forcibly taken by the police to the spot and attacked,” said Nagoti, a member of the Gadchiroli zila parishad.

Then came news of two “successful ambush, planned and executed by Gadchiroli district’s C-60 commandos (the Maharashtra police’s special anti-Naxal unit); 40 people were reported death. According to the police, two days before the encounters, security agencies had received precise information about the Naxal movement in the region.

On April 22, in the forest area surrounding Kasansur in Gadchiroli — which geographically falls in Chattisgarh’s Pengunda village in Bijapur district — the C-60 commandos had opened fire on a “group of Naxals” who had allegedly been camping there for a few hours. In all, 34 were killed in the firing. A day later, at the nearby Rajaram-Khandla forest, six more, including a senior member described as Nandu, were killed.

As reported by The Hindu, K. Vijay Kumar, senior security advisor, Ministry of Home Affairs, claimed these encounters were perhaps one of the biggest operations in terms of the number of Maoists killed in the recent years.

A long wait

The villagers of Gattepalli say they hadn’t heard anything about the encounters. They waited until the end of April 22 for their children to return. When they did not, the eight families travelled around 140 km the next day to visit the police headquarters in Gadchiroli.

No information was forthcoming. Talking to The Wire correspondent, the villagers had a lot of questions. “Why did they (police) not tell us when we visited them on Tuesday (April 24),” asked one. “Eight people – one from each family – are in Gadchiroli right now for their DNA tests. The police could have just shown us the list and we could have at least identified and rested (cremated) our child by now. This is cruel beyond comprehension,” said another. The mood was one of despondency, at the lack of any information and at the way events had unfolded.

On April 24, the villagers had approached the police headquarters in Gadchiroli and had filed a missing persons complaint. The police, the villagers claimed, took down every detail and asked the family members to return the next day. By then, the list of names and photos were already released by the police for the media.

“Instead of showing the list to us, they took us to the mortuary and asked us to recognise our children among the bodies. Those bodies were wrapped in thick polythene bags and only the faces were left open,” said 29-year old Bijja Chundu Madavi. The bodies, Bijja claimed, were strewn about in a “very hot room” and emitted a foul smell. “The faces had decomposed completely and we failed to recognise anyone,” Bijja added. Now the families are waiting for the DNA tests to confirm that the dead are indeed the village’s children.

Bijja’s 16-year-old brother Mangesh is one of the eight persons to have left the village with Rassu that evening. Mangesh, a class 11 student at the nearby Bhagwantrao Arts and Science college in Ettapalli had returned home only a few days ago. “It was a residential programme. After finishing his class 10, we sent him there for higher education,” Bijja said. “He is a good student,” he said, and then corrected to “he was a good student”.

A day after The Wire visited the village, Gadchiroli’s superintendent of police Abhinav Deshmukh confirmed one of the bodies had been identified by the villagers. Though he could not confirm the name of the deceased, he said, “The families had come to Gadchiroli (police headquarters) and identified one of the eight missing persons. The body was handed over to the family on April 28. We would be able to confirm other identities after receiving the DNA test reports.”

Several versions of the killings have appeared in local papers, all depending on the statements issued by different police officers from time to time. Earlier the eight were identified as “deadly armed rebels”. Their age, names and village were not disclosed. But once the families approached the police, another version of the story was put out. The police claimed these eight youth were a part of the new recruits who had come to the village to “meet their commander” for the first time.

According to the police, 34 “armed rebels” gathered on the banks of Indravati river were killed in an alleged encounter between the C-60 commandos and Naxals. Credit: Sukanya Shantha/The Wire

Since Sainath alias Dolesh Madhi Atram (32), the alleged commander of Permelli Dalam (who, according to the police, was recently elevated as the divisional committee member) is also was from Guttepalli village, the story had ready takers and both the regional language and the English media published the police’s version.

The villagers say they know whenever someone is getting ready to join Naxal groups. “When Sainath left home some ten-15 years ago, we knew he was not going to ever return. If these children were to join the rebels too, they would not have taken the risk of leaving in a group,” said an elderly person. Sainath, according to the police record, joined the movement in 2004 and had over 75 criminal cases against him including murder and abduction. The police claimed there was a reward of Rs 16 lakh on his head.

Each family member that this reporter spoke to claimed that the youth had carried a bag with them which contained their fineries in it. They also claimed that none of them had earlier gone missing, something that could indicate if they had come in contact with the Naxals and had participated in the movement in some form.

For tribals in the Naxal-affected area, the only way to establish their “legitimate identity” is by possessing as many active legal documents as possible. Tribals here protect their legal documents like Aadhar card and voting card dearly. Since most of those who went missing were still minors, the only official document they possessed were their Aadhaar cards – a few, like in Mangesh’s case, had college IDs.

According to the villagers, the police took away all the Aadhar cards claiming these were necessary for further investigation. This has raised fears of tampering with evidence. “Now we will have no legal documents to counter whatever claims the police makes.”

Gadchiroli’s SP Deshmukh claimed that slain Naxal leader Sainath was in touch with the children. “In our preliminary investigation, we have found that these youths were in touch with Sainath. He had been visiting the village and meeting them. It is likely that Sainath had traveled with them to the spot of the encounter,” Deshmukh told The Wire.

Nagoti along with the villagers is now seeking independent inquiry into the killing. “Whether a part of the movement or not, this cold-blooded murder of such young children cannot be justified. They have snatched an entire generation from us. Only a non-partial, independent inquiry can ensure families of the deceased get justice,” he said.

This tiny and remote village is in a state of gloom, having lost so many of its children. Compounding that is official apathy and lack of communication from the authorities. But worse is not being able to counter the official version that has been spread and reported by the media, which has branded their young children as outlaws.