Tribal residents in a remote village of Jharkhand’s West Singhbhum district have alleged that the CRPF personnel had resorted to brutal attack when they could not extract information about the movement of Naxalites.
According to the villagers, 11 persons were seriously injured when the security forces had indiscriminately attacked them. Three villagers with leg fractures and waist injuries have been admitted to hospital.
“On June 15, when the villagers were assisting a fellow resident to cover his house with a tile roof in Chiriabera hamlet of Anjedbeda village, the security forces arrived and asked them about the Naxalites. As the villagers don’t understand Hindi, they could not respond. This angered the CRPF men,” alleged Turam Tamsoy, a resident of Anjedbeda.
“Subsequently, they resorted to indiscriminate thrashing. An elderly woman tried to defuse the situation but she too was beaten up resulting in a waist injury,” said Mr. Tamsoy.
Manki Tubid, a local social activist, said all the injured villagers were shifted to a hospital in Chaibasa, the district headquarters town, with great difficulty on June 16.
“Initially, the local police discouraged villagers from lodging a complaint against the security forces. The muffasil police station of Chaibasa refused to accept the complaint but agreed to investigate when villagers backed by activists refused to relent,” said Mr. Tubid.
The Jharkhand Janadhikar Mahasabha, a network of social activists, expressed its shock over the reports that appeared in local newspapers suggesting that left-wing ultras had beaten up the villagers and the CRPF personnel had no role in it.
When asked, the West Singhbhum police said it was a standard ploy of the left-oriented social activists to charge the security forces with unsubstantiated allegations.
“Extremist groups obviously do not want the presence of the security forces in remote villages. It is happening in Bastar and it is also happening in other regions affected by naxalism. However, we are investigating the circumstances under which the villagers had sustained injuries,” said West Singhbhum Addl. SP.
