After almost a month in incarceration, CPIML UP State Secretary Sudhakar Yadav and State Standing Committee member and Mirzapur District Secretary Jeera Bharati and other comrades were released on bail after they were arrested for resisting the brutal demolitions against Adivasis in in Tendua Khurd village in UP’s Mirzapur. While Jeera Bharati and five others were released on January 22, Sudhakar Yadav was released on January 27. A large number CPIML activists gathered outside the jail to welcome the comrades.
They were arrested by Special Operations Group of UP Police (SOG) without any warrant or telling any reason at Adalhaat on 3 January 2026, while they were returning after attending the funeral of a party comrade. At the time of arrest and under custody, a senior woman leader comrade Jeera Bharati was brutally beaten up by the male police leading to many injuries. For the next 24 hours people were in the dark about the whereabouts of these two comrades.
The police arrested CPI(ML) leaders after framing them on false charges because villagers had resisted a mid-night bulldozer operation in Tendua Khurd village which falls under Lalganj police station. Comrade Jeera Bharti is named in the FIR, State Secretary Comrade Sudhakar Yadav's name is not mentioned in that. However, the administration implicated the CPI(ML) State Secretary among the fifty unnamed individuals mentioned in the FIR. Both leaders were not present at the site of the incident, but they have been targeted for leading movements against the displacement of Adivasis and the poor.
During the demolition action on Tendua Khurd, forest guards and those accompanying them forcibly entered homes and began dragging women out. One woman’s arm was broken, while another sustained serious injuries to her chest. A girl aged around 15-16 suffered severe injuries to her thighs, and another girl of the same age was picked up and thrown violently to the ground. These attacks created panic and chaos in the village. When the villagers regrouped and resisted collectively, the forest officials and other persons fled the scene.
The Forest Department later filed a complaint and the police registered FIR No. 04/2026 (dated 03 January 2026) at Lalganj police station. The FIR invokes sections 221, 352, 351(3), 324(5), 121(1), 132, 191(2), 191(3), and 109(1) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), along with Sections 5 and 26 of the Forest Act and Section 7 of the CL Act.
In the Adivasi regions of Uttar Pradesh, particularly Mirzapur, Sonbhadra, and Naugarh in Chandauli, the Yogi government, the forest department, and a nexus of land and forest mafias are attacking the land and forest rights of tribals and other traditional forest dwellers. In Tendua Khurd, the members of the Kol and Dharikar communities have been settled for four generations, sustaining themselves through agriculture. Several villagers have been granted residential land titles. The Kol community is recognized as an Adivasi group; however, despite persistent demands, they have not been accorded Scheduled Tribe (ST) status in Uttar Pradesh. For a long time, the Forest Department and the government has been attempting to evict them from their homes and farmlands.
The CPI(ML) has been consistently leading the struggles against the forced displacement of villagers and for the land and forest rights to them. This is the reason CPI(ML) leaders are being targeted by the Yogi’s BJP government in the state.
