Odisha anti-Maoist operation: Elderly couple calling son, villagers looking for goats

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Pongalapadar 2015

Dhuba Nayak, 50, and his wife Bhubudi had walked 2 km from Pongalapadar to a hill to call up their three sons living in Kerala and Hyderabad. The couple were stopped by jawans carrying out a combing operation. In the next half-hour, villagers remember hearing gunshots. Then Kandhamal SP K V Singh called it an “encounter with Maoists” while police showed country-made rifles, jerrycans and kitbags to local journalists.

“How could a preacher who had voted in the 2014 election, and was seen in the village, have been a Maoist?” said Rahul.

Amid the outcry over the latest killings, no police officer was willing to come on record over this incident or those preceding it, except insisting that the villagers killed last week, who were travelling in an autorickshaw, came in the line of firing between the SOG and Maoists. About the Nayak couple, a senior police officer said a probe had found that the bullets in their bodies were not of the kind used by SOG personnel. But Rahul alleged, “Nothing came out of a probe by the Revenue Divisional Commissioner. An ADG-ranked officer conducted a separate probe and tried to show my parents were Maoists.”

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Rahul now looks after his two younger brothers and sister. “All we got was a temporary job of peon in the Kotagarh BDO’s office for my brother and Rs 2 lakh from Red Cross,” he said. “The money was spent in repaying my father’s loans and arranging a feast.”

Gumudumaha 2016

CM Naveen Patnaik has ordered a judicial probe. The government has set up a special investigation team headed by addl DGP (human rights protection cell) Mahendra Pratap. The State Human Rights Commission has sought a report from the home secretary, the DGP, the IG (southern range) and the RDC. Officials said Rameswar Oraon, chairman of the National Commission for STs, will be in Odisha from Tuesday, visit Kandhamal and submit a report to the Home Ministry.

The BJP and the Congress called a bandh in Kandhamal Monday, and agitated on the streets. Former Congress MP Pradip Majhi sat on a dharna outside the district collector’s office demanding the arrest of the SP and IG. The BJP demanded murder cases against the policemen and compensation to the families of those killed and injured. BJD spokesman Pratap Deb accused the opposition of politicising the issue.

The other cases

# NOVEMBER 15, 2015. The SOG came under criticism after they allegedly shot dead three villagers including two tribals of Kalahandi in a reserve forest. Two boys too were injured. The five tribals from Nisanguda and Panchkul villages were apparently looking for missing goats of panchayat ward member Jay Shankar Naik. SOG personnel were then combing the area in search of a Maoist group. Naik, who was a Dalit, and tribals Jay Majhi and Sukru were killed.

Initially, local police and intelligence officials in Bhubaneswar said the deceased were victims of a crossfire. But then Kalahandi SP Brijesh Rai said the deceased prima facie seemed to be Maoists as police had found a muzzle loader, empty cartridges and Maoist literature near the bodies. Police gave Rs 40,000 each to the families of the deceased for cremation. The Odisha Human Rights Commission is still probing the incident.

# DECEMBER 27, 2010. A team of SOG and CRPF combing the jungles near Paikmal block of Bargarh district claimed to have killed two “Maoists”. One of these was Madhav Singh Thakur, then president of Paikmal block of the BJP; the other was businessman Ramesh Sahu. Bargarh police said they had information of a Maoist camp. They did not, however, recover any firearms or Maoist literature from the “camp”, only some rice and dal.

“Thakur was associated with Gandhamardan Surakshya Parishad for several years,” said Pradip Purohit, BJP MLA from Bargarh. “Three days before he was killed, he had gone to the police station to help cops find a boy who had eloped with a local girl. How could the police brand him a Maoist?”

In an order in 2012, the National Human Rights Commission said there was no evidence that Thakur and Sahu had Maoist links. It asked the state government to take action against the police officials; the state has filed a review petition.

Situated between CPI(Maoist)’s regional bureaus in Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, Odisha has an estimated 500 Maoists in 10 districts. Some 25,000 policemen and 16 battalions of BSF and CRPF are engaged against them. “The Kandhamal case could affect the anti-Maoist operations,” an officer admitted.