People’s heroes are immortals,” reads the first sentence engraved on the white plaque of the lofty, red-coloured martyrs’ memorial column. The sentiment is echoed in Telugu and Hindi translations. It further reads, “Those mountains red and the flowers red; Oh! Their death red and our homage red.” This column at Indervelli village of Adilabad district, nearly 300 kilometres north of Hyderabad, in Telangana, holds profound significance for the Gonds, a tribal community.
Nearly 43 years ago, on April 20, 1981, several Gond people died and many sustained grievous injuries when police opened fire at them at Indervelli. There are conflicting numbers of death and injuries; while the government says 13 tribals were killed, members of rights organisations put the figure at 60.
Discrepancies also persist regarding the reason behind the firing. Some claim that the police resorted to firing at unarmed Gond tribals following a dispute over their participation in a meeting convened by the Andhra Pradesh Rythu Coolie Sangham (RCS), a farmer organisation affiliated to Communist Party of India-Marxist Leninist People’s War Group of naxalites (PWG and its frontal organisations, including RCS, were banned by the A.P. government in 1992. The ban was relaxed for 18 months in 1995 and reimposed in 1996). The police, for their part, contended that they were compelled to open fire after a tribal woman allegedly attacked a constable with a spear.
Despite the passage of over four decades since the tragic incident, the wounds of that day still run deep within the Gond families, as they grapple with the challenges of making ends meet, haunted by the memories of the violence that altered their lives. For many, little has changed in terms of earnings, dwellings, or the overall quality of life. The pain of loss is compounded by the socio-economic exploitation they continue to face from various quarters. The martyrs’ memorial column, standing as a symbol of bravery and sacrifice for the Gonds, now serves as a painful reminder of the justice that has eluded them for decades.
Septuagenarian Jangu Bai, who resides in Kannapur village of Sirkonda mandal, 13 km from Indervelli, cannot recall in detail the happenings on that fateful day. “I had gone to the weekly market with my husband, Madavi Sambu, on a Monday. During the police firing, a bullet hit my right arm. He too suffered a bullet injury on his hand. We were bleeding severely,” she says. She was rushed to Hyderabad for treatment while Sambu was admitted to a local hospital, where he succumbed to the injury.
“Though my injury healed within a few months, I am unable to use my right arm fully,” says Jangu Bai, who lives with her daughter-in-law and grandchildren in a two-room house with a thatched roof. Her two daughters are married while her son died of an ailment.
Equally heart-wrenching is the story of Lachchu Bai, a sexagenarian, living in Thatiguda village of Indervelli mandal. Her husband Sedmaki Koddu, an agricultural labourer, went to the weekly market on April 20, 1981. She does not remember if he went to attend the Gond tribal meeting or to buy vegetables, but Koddu never returned home. She was told that he was killed in the police firing. With the help of neighbours, she went to Indervelli to trace Koddu’s body.
“I was not even shown his body. We were merely told that he had died,” she recalls, time not having dried up the tears in her eyes. One of her two sons died of an unexplained fever when he was barely 10 years old. She still works in cotton and jowar fields to make a living.
The backstory
When Emergency was imposed in India in 1975, various factions of Left parties aiming to mobilise the oppressed and marginalised sections of society faced severe suppression by the State. The attempts by some parties to engage in armed struggle were ruthlessly crushed. Following the lifting of the Emergency two years later, certain parties resumed their activities.
In 1980, Kondapalli Seetharamaiah initiated the Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) People’s War, along with associates like Muppala Laxman Rao, known by his nom de guerre Ganapathy. They dispatched approximately 22 student teams to study the socio-economic and political landscape in the northern Telangana districts and areas along the Godavari river basin in Telangana.
They identified eight sections of society which would help them carry out protracted armed struggle against the ‘imperial State’. While engaged in a fight against the government through ‘underground armed squads’, they envisioned the mobilisation of peasants, workers, students, and other sections to strengthen their movement. To achieve this objective, the Rythu Coolie Sangham, Radical Students Union, and Singareni Karmika Samakhya (Singareni Collieries Workers Federation) were established within a few months.
Their studies revealed that Gond families in Adilabad district were facing exploitation from traders, landlords, and others. These tribal families were allegedly also being harassed by Forest officials while gathering wood and other products from the forests. Authorities were reluctant to grant land rights to the tribal cultivators, leading to discontent among them against the government.
Against this backdrop, the Rythu Coolie Sangham (RCS) planned to organise a district-level conference, focusing primarily on mobilising different sections, especially tribals, in Indervelli on April 20, 1981. Given that the weekly market was convened every Monday at the location, they anticipated that tribals visiting the market would also participate in the meeting.
Writer and speaker N. Venugopal, who was also the editor of Telugu monthly journal Veekshanam, along with three others, was in close proximity to the site of police firing on that day. The four had started from Hanamkonda for Indervelli in a Road Transport Corporation bus for the meeting. The bus was intercepted by the police a few kilometres ahead of the meeting venue. Expressing suspicions over their intentions, police took them to the upper primary school building for questioning. After bombarding Venugopal and the others with questions, the then Adilabad Superintendent of Police M.V. Krishna Rao directed his subordinates to send them back to Hanamkonda, ensuring they did not get down in between.
“The questioning went on for a long time. Midway, the SP got a wireless message that trouble had erupted at the meeting venue and the situation was spiralling out of control. We understood that police firing had started,” Venugopal recalls. A police party shifted the quartet to a vehicle and dropped them off at Hanamkonda. “We came to know about the deaths and injuries through the newspaper,” he says.
Digging deeper
Dasu Kesava Rao, retired Chief of Bureau of The Hindu daily for united Andhra Pradesh, was among the first to reach Indervelli from Hyderabad for coverage, along with two other reporters, the following day. After learning that the death toll was possibly much higher than what was mentioned in the official statement, they ventured into the villages surrounding Indervelli, trekking through hillocks in the scorching summer. According to Rao, the police initially gave permission to the meeting, but later withdrew it at short notice. “Unaware of this, tribals continued to head to the meeting. Some attending the market had also dropped by out of curiosity,” the veteran journalist recalls.
When the journalist trio reached Pittabongaram village with a population of 500-odd Gond tribals, situated 2 km from Indervelli, silence greeted them. Three of the villagers had been killed in police firing. “The widows of Mandadi Jangu, Madavi Ramu, and Kotnaka Gagru looked at us blankly. I remember the village head telling me that they were afraid even to cry aloud,” he adds. Based on the interaction with different Gond families, Rao realised that a majority of them were unaware of police cancelling permission for the meeting.
“I remember seeing a tribal woman named Isru Bai chained to her bed at a government hospital at Adilabad. We were told that she had grabbed a policeman’s gun and butted him. She was badly injured,” Rao narrates. The district administration learnt about the names of some of the victims through this journalist group.
He also remembers many disputing the government’s statement of 13 tribals being killed in police firing. “I quoted a shop owner claiming that he had a seen a truck-load of bodies getting dumped into a well. A senior police officer used highly objectionable expressions while disputing my version about the death toll,” he shares.
A few years later, when Rao was accompanying Adilabad District Collector to an official programme, he came across startling facts. “The Collector himself told a meeting of forest officials that the number of tribals killed in Indervelli police firing was much more than what the district administration claimed,” Rao says.
Now retired, then Adilabad SP Krishna Rao, in an interview, said one of the sad experiences of his career was seeing a subordinate officer getting killed in the Indervelli incident. He said the tribals were resisting the police who wanted them to leave the place since permission was withdrawn. He maintained that he was there with less than three dozen police personnel.
One of the tribal women attacked a policeman named Mohammed Ghouse with a spear resulting in bleeding injuries, he explained, adding that the latter died right in front of him.
When contacted, the former cop said he was in Morocco and that he would be available for comment on returning to India.
Stress and succour
The police firing incident continued to echo for a few more years. In 1983, then president of RCS, Ganji Rama Rao got a memorial column constructed at the site of violence on the Indervelli outskirts, on the lines of one he had seen in China commemorating the Chinese Revolution of 1949.
In 1986, the memorial column was demolished by blowing it up with explosive material. Tribals believe the people behind it had the tacit support of police. The memorial in its present form was rebuilt in 1987. An air of tension prevailed at the location every April, with people attempting to pay tribute to those who died, only to face police-imposed restrictions. People would be prohibited from approaching the column on April 20, and even vehicular movement was regulated in the days leading up to the event, until a few years ago.
All that has changed now. Two years ago, during a public meeting in Indervelli, now Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy, serving as the Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee president then, acknowledged that the police firing was a mistake. Recently, while launching his campaign for the Lok Sabha elections at a public gathering in Indervelli, he reiterated this, affirming the government’s commitment to developing a memorial park around the existing memorial column.
Members of 15 Gond families, who lost their loved ones in police firing more than four decades ago, were given about 165 square metres of open plots each and ₹5 lakh assistance to construct a house.
For 70-year-old Madavi Devubai, who lost her mother Isru Bai, this has made no difference. “She spends most of the day sitting outside her house. She is unaffected by the government’s gesture,” says her neighbour and Pittabongaram village head Vetti Rajeshwar Patel, who is also in his 70s. He is upset that Isru Bai has not being acknowledged as a victim. She suffered a bullet wound on her leg and had to be shifted to Osmania general hospital in Hyderabad after initial treatment at Adilabad. Her leg had to be amputated eventually and she died in 1996 due to age-related ailments. “Every year, we would place her photo at the memorial column and pay tribute to her. But this year, the authorities did not allow us entry even as the victims were given relief,” he rues.
