An 8-member fact-finding team of All India People’s Forum visited four districts of Chhattisgarh (Bastar, Dantewada, Sukma and Bijapur) between 8-11 June 2016. The fact-finding team spoke to several victims of systematic communal violence against Christians. At several villages, resolutions adopted under the Chhattisgarh Gram Panchayat Act have been wrongly invoked in violation of the spirit of the law to restrict non-Hindus from residing or building places of worship, even though the High Court has quashed such gram sabha resolutions in two instances. Christians are being prevented from using burial grounds in several villages. Meanwhile, while the gram panchayat laws enacted to protect the rights of adivasis are being misused to harass Christians, the same laws are openly violated by the security forces that are grabbing forest land for mining companies in Raoghat, Kanker district. Villagers fighting for implementation of forest rights laws there are being threatened with imprisonment as ‘Maoists’.
The team also uncovered several instances of fake encounters; rapes; fake cases and arbitrary arrests; and fake surrenders. At Palamadgu village in Sukma district, the team found that the police claim of having killed two women Maoists in an encounter was false – the victims were two village girls aged 13 and 12. At Kadenar in Bijapur district, the team found that a couple whom the police and CRPF claimed to have killed during an ‘encounter’ with a large number of armed Maoists, was actually picked up from their home and killed in cold blood while in custody. This couple had left the Maoists after a year-long association with them, more than five years ago.
The team intervened to help get an FIR registered in a case where a Chhattisgarh Armed Forces jawan had raped a 12-year-old adivasi girl.
The team found villagers to be terrorized by the CRPF camps and state police force.
The AIPF team comprised former Madhya Pradesh MLA Dr Sunilam of Samajwadi Samagam, former Jharkhand MLA and CPIML Central Committee member Vinod Singh, Kavita Krishnan, Secretary of All India Progressive Women’s Association, Brijendra Tiwari of AICCTU, Amlan Bhatacharya, State Secretary of PUCL West Bengal, Advocate Aradhana Bhargava of Chhindwara, Advocate Ajoy Dutta of Kolkata and Amlendu Choudhury. Researcher Bela Bhatia and activist Soni Sori also accompanied the team.
