Human rights violations in Chhattisgarh: activists

April 29, 2016 12:00 am | Updated 08:10 am IST - NEW DELHI:

An all-India, fact-finding team of activists has brought out in graphic details of what it describes as the “plain slaughter” of villagers of Bijapur and Sukma districts of Chhattisgarh by the security forces.

Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, members of the team, which investigated the death of four unarmed villagers of Peddajojer (Bijapur) and conducted inquiries into the large scale violence, particularly sexual violence, that the security forces unleashed in Nendra (Bijapur) and Kunna (Sukma) between January 11 to 14, said that the violence in Chhattisgarh has gone up drastically since October 2014.

Presenting the fact-finding report, the Members of the Coordination of Democratic Rights Organization (CDRO) and Committee for Protection of Democratic Rights, Tamil Nadu (CPDR) said that the villagers told the team, which visited Chhattisgarh that “six villagers- three men and three young girls of Peddajojer were on their way to the nearby market for buying daily provisions when they were ambushed by security forces.

Two girls escaped hearing gunshots, but the rest were shot dead.

The security forces took away the bodies without informing the family members of the deceased…In violation of National Human Rights commission guidelines, the post mortem were done at the hospital without proper identification. No video recording was done.”

“We are told on our face that we belong to the enemy group by officials of the Chhattisgarh government,” said Isha Khandelwal, of Jagdalpur Legal Aid Group, which takes up cases of locals accused of Naxalism and of fake arrests and encounters.

The report points out that when the police and State government were asked about the action to be taken in the case of ‘fake encounter’, the official response was ‘we will look into the matter’.

It took the team and survivors 13 days to get an FIR registered in the Kunna village case, wherein five men and five women were illegally taken into custody, women were sexually assaulted and one man died.

“These incidents along with the climate of fear that has been created for ordinary villagers, activists, lawyers and journalists, needs to be seen in the light of Mission 16, which forms the governments objective in eliminating Maoists and handing over these lands to mining companies,” said Ashish Gupta, coordinator of CDRO.

The report points out that when the government was asked about the action taken in the ‘fake encounter’, the response was ‘we will look into the matter’

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