Bijapur district (Chhattisgarh): It was 3:30 in the afternoon on the first day of 2024, when Maase Sodi, with her infant daughter in her arms, was at a friend’s house in the remote Adivasi village of Mutvendi in this southern Chhattisgarh district. 

As she bent to a side, watching an approaching bulldozer slowly drive up the village road, a bullet sliced through her  little and ring fingers and slammed into her six-month-old baby, Mangli.

The child probably died within seconds. Maase Sodi, 28, her hand bloodied, rushed for cover behind a wall. 

Mutvendi is at the heart of a swathe of land in central India, roiled for decades by a Maoist insurgency, which the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said it is determined to defeat by building roads and security infrastructure and pushing back the rebels. 

Bijapur is one of seven districts that comprise the south Chhattisgarh region of Bastar—a region slightly larger than the state of Kerala—where about 70% of the population comprise tribal, or Adivasi communities. 

Dry deciduous forests cover more than 30% of Bastar, and it has been the focal point of a Maoist insurgency because of the vast reserves of iron ore, coal and other minor minerals that lie beneath.  

There is support and opposition to the efforts to build infrastructure. Maase Sodi was one of those who were in opposition.

A short, determined-looking woman, Maase Sodi had left household work and three children at home, swung her six-month-old on to her hip to assemble at Kunjam Linga’s house, along with four other women, to get a clear view of the main village path.

They were there to protect their trees, scheduled to be cut because the government was laying a 12-m-wide road from Mutvendi to the key junction of Gangaloor, 21 km to the west. 

It is part of a plan to link remote villages, the government said, in the thrall of Maoist rebels.

Maase Sodi was anxious about her two trees, a mango and a salfi, the sap of which is used to make a popular local beer. The trees meant a lot to the village, and villagers had gathered in small groups, at different homes, to protect their trees. 

None of them expected any violent reaction to their peaceful attempts to save their trees.  

But that day in Mutvendi, a dull afternoon suddenly came alive with gunshots.

“All of us ran helter-skelter, cowering from the bullets that were randomly fired,” said Dule Vetti, 50, one of the five women who gathered with Sodi. She pointed to blood stains on the mud floor two days after the baby’s death. The police said the villagers were caught in a “crossfire” between them and Maoists. 

Locals alleged that the bullets only came from the police and paramilitary forces, who randomly fired at them.

About 15 minutes later, as the firing ended, Vetti looked at Maase Sodi, who was crying inconsolably. Her baby had died. 

Only then, said Vetti, did she notice the blood on her friend’s hand.

6 Civilian Deaths in January 

The death of baby Mangli and five more in January 2024 were the latest in a long-running and intensifying battle between security forces and Maoists that has claimed thousands of lives in more than half a century (some instances here, here, here, here and here), with villagers often caught in the middle.

These were the other deaths in January:

–On 20 January, Nagi Punem and Soni Madkam, both teenage girls, and Kosa Karam, a middle-aged man, were fatally shot by the police, villagers alleged. Police recorded the deaths as those of Maoists killed in a firefight in the forests of Bellam Nendra village in Bijapur. 

–A week later, 40-year-old farmer and father of four Podiya Mandavi, from Pedka village in the neighbouring district of Dantewada, died in police custody after being detained for alleged involvement in a bomb that killed 10 security personnel (DRG) and a driver  in April 2023. 

–On 30 January, 22-year-old farmer Ramesh Oyam died in police firing, his brother in law alleged, in Bhairamgarh tehsil, close to the Indravati river. The local SP confirmed the death of a civilian, but denied the police were involved.  

After baby Mangli died, police forced her burial the next day, against the wishes of her family and village locals and before a ritual puja and prayers could be conducted. Villagers were upset when security forces rounded up the dead infant’s relatives and kept them in custody until the hasty burial. 

Local journalists said they were stopped from meeting the family or relatives, after a police press release on 1 January 2024 announced the “death of a six-month old baby in a cross-fire between the Maoists and the police force”. 

The police took eight villagers, along with the mother and the dead infant, to the district headquarters in Bijapur on 1 January, reaching around 11 pm, said Hidma Mandavi, Maase Sodi’s nephew. There, while the mother was being treated for the injuries to her fingers, the others were taken to a nearby Covid isolation ward and prevented from leaving, he alleged. 

The police closetted Maase Sodi and Mandavi in the office of the district collector, issued her with an Aadhaar number, opened a bank account for her, gave her a ration card, and told her to sign some forms and papers. 

A compensation of Rs 700,000 for Mangli’s death was deposited in the account, said Vineet Sahu, deputy superintendent of police, Bijapur.  When Article 14 met Maase Sodi on 15 January, she said she could not confirm this because she did not know how to operate the account.

Human Costs Of An Intensified Campaign

Former prime minister Manmohan Singh called the Maoist insurgency “the single biggest internal security challenge” that India had ever faced (here, here and here), their sway once extending to a third of India’s area. 

Since then, security forces have pushed back the Maoists, limiting their influence to a few districts of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Maharashtra and Bihar. The killings in Bastar come at a time when the union government has intensified its efforts to end the insurgency.

On 6 October 2023, union home minister Amit Shah said his government was determined to end the Maoist insurgency within two years. “Naxalism is a curse to humanity and we are resolved to uproot it in all its forms,” said Shah.

In December 2023, minister of state for home affairs Nityanand Rai told a member of Parliament (MP) from India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that roads, banks, ATMs, telecom towers, post offices, health centres and schools were being built and police and security forces were being strengthened in Maoist areas.

All these, the minister said, had led to a 76% decline in “left-wing violence” since 2010, with a 60% fall in the deaths of security forces and civilians: from 153 in 2018 to 61 in 2022.

In March 2023, the government’s response to a question about civilian death in Chhattisgarh, from Deepak Bainj, an Adivasi Congress MP from Bastar, revealed that more civilians were dying than security forces or Maoists.  

In five years between 2018 and 2022, the number of deaths of civilians (335) exceeded those of security personnel (168) and Maoists (327) by 50% and 2%, respectively. 

Our compilation of data from annual home ministry reports and a comparison with data from the Chhattisgarh government, procured from the office of the Bastar inspector general of police, puts civilian deaths  at 2,039 over 20 years to 2,022.

This figure is 35% higher than deaths of security forces (including the paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force or CRPF and the state police) and 40% more than deaths of Maoists.  

The deaths of Nagi Punem, Soni Madkam, Kosa Karam, Ramesh Oyam, Podiya Mandavi will be listed in a table of either “Left Wing Extremists Killed” or “Civilians Killed”. 

Our investigation indicated that at least half of the six killed in January could be listed as Maoists. 

Restricted Entry

The government’s determination to wipe out the Maoist insurgency was visible in the newly-laid roads to Mutvendi and Bellam-Nendra, but as this reporter’s journeys indicated, getting there is an arduous task for anyone not associated with the government or security forces.

There are police checkposts on both roads. It is 46 km from Gangaloor to Mutvendi, but the police had closed the road to journalists and activists, forcing a five-to-six-hour trek through a forest path. 

The distance between the town of Awapalli and Bellam-Nendra village, where three more who died later were from, is less than 20 km, but the barricades forced a two-hour motorcycle ride through another forest path.

In both instances, the police and union paramilitary forces cited danger from improvised explosive devices (IEDs) or roadside bombs, frequently used by Maoists to attack security forces.

Like the five women who gathered in Kunjam Linga’s house in Mutvendi, others had gathered in nearby houses of the village trying to save their trees. In a meeting on 27 December 2023, they said, the police had told them to point out their trees to see if they could be spared the axe or the bulldozer. 

Budhram Kunjam, 50, said he was among those who attended the meeting in the house of Somlu Punem, 5 km from Mutvendi, in a village called Kawadgaon, the site of a new security camp. 

“We were asked by the security force to be present to point out our respective trees when the bulldozer came,” said an angry Kunjam, “So that they could try and spare those trees from being cut.” 

‘Encounter’ With Maoists: Police

Talking to Article 14 over the phone a week after the killing of 1st January, Aanjaneya Varshney, the Bijapur superintendent of police (SP), denied that security forces had fired on the villagers of Mutvendi. 

He said as security forces and the head of the construction team from Kawadgaon neared Mutvendi, they saw at least eight Maoists armed with self-loading rifles (SLRs, produced in Indian ordnance factories for police and paramilitary forces). 

Two of the Maoists, according to Varshney, triggered an IED, injuring two men of the district reserve guard (DRG), a special force comprising Adivasi fighters.

“Our jawans saw the cadres with the SLR guns triggering the blast and when the police opened fire, they ran away,” said Varshney. 

Two hours after the security forces returned to the camp in Kawadgaon, the people of Mutvendi came there with Maase Sodi and her dead baby, who were then taken to Bijapur hospital for “necessary protocol”, said Varshney.

Maase Sodi disputed Varshney’s version of events. 

According to her, the police approached the distraught women, and when they saw the lifeless baby, they insisted Maase Sodi breast-feed the infant to try and revive her. When this did not work, she said, they asked her to come to the Kawadgaon camp to meet their senior officers. 

With her dead baby, Maase Sodi and 50 other villagers walked 5 km to the camp, where the police told them that the baby had died in a crossfire.  When the villagers objected to this explanation, senior police officials at the camp angrily asked them to shut up, said the villagers.   

From the Kawadgaon camp, Maase Sodi, her dead baby and eight villagers were taken to the Bijapur district hospital. 

“The hospital was surrounded by security forces, and reporters who tried to take pictures of the mother being taken in were threatened, and their mobile phones were taken away,” said Pushpa Rokde, a local reporter who reached the hospital later that night. 

Maase Sodi and her nephew Mandavi were taken to the tehsil office and collector’s office on the afternoon of 2 January, where Maase Sodi’s Adhaar card, bank account and ration cards were made within a few hours. 

Among the papers Maase Sodi said she was “made to sign”, she said, was an acceptance of the compensation of Rs 700,000. 

Mandavi and Maase Sodi were then driven in a police vehicle 45 km to Mutvendi, while the other six were confined to the Kawadgaon camp. 

“The police wanted to conduct the burial soon after reaching, on the evening of 2 January,  in their presence,” said Mandavi. 

The village elders refused. 

The burial of the baby required the presence of both the mother and father to conduct certain rituals, explained Budhram Kunjam, a local. 

Mangli’s father, a 30 year-old farmer called Baman Sodi, had gone to Gangaloor to get materials for the puja, including incense sticks, clay pots and a shroud. Unsuccessful in ensuring the burial, the security forces—CRPF, police and DRG—returned to the Kawadgaon camp, leaving Maase Sodi with her dead child in the village. 

To ensure Mangli was buried, security forces reached the village by 7am the next day on 3 January. They brought with them two sacks of rice weighing 25 kg each, 10 kg of dal, 5 litres of oil, 5 kg each of onion and potato, 2 kg each of garlic and ginger, brass pots, vessels, a white shroud and bottles of Old Monk rum for the villagers.

The village burial area is about 1.5 km in the forest from Mutvendi. When we visited, Mangli’s grave was a small mound of mud heaped with hastily placed rocks.  

The ceremony of idut pokhtar—when the family gathers the favourite things of the dead person, food and homemade liquor as offerings, usually on the second day after burial—could not be carried out, said locals, because the police had taken away Mangli’s parents.  

As News Of Death Spread, So Did Protests

As news of Mangli’s death and the confinement of her parents spread over the day that followed, villagers from across the Gangaloor and Awapalli areas—spread across a radius of about 40 km—began to extend solidarity.

To present a memorandum to the district collector in Bijapur, almost every member of Mutvendi’s 30 households and representatives from over 50 villages, more than 2,000 (1,800 according to the police personnel who were standing guard at the barricade) Adivasis trekked through the forests. The main road remained a no-entry zone because of construction, said officials. 

The villagers gathered at the village of Gorna late on 12 January, 5 km from the Bijapur district headquarters.  

As the protestors—including mothers with young infants, young boys and girls, elderly men, women, and Mangli’s parents—began their march on 13 January, with lawyer, writer and human rights activist Bela Bhatia and Adivasi activist Soni Sori, they found the route barricaded after 2 km. 

Security forces were deployed to stop protestors from reaching Bijapur town.

District officials invited a limited number of representatives to the collector’s office—an offer that the angry villagers turned down. They wanted to walk through Bijapur town to draw attention to the death. 

The same evening, the Bijapur district collector went on leave for three days. Protestors wondered why he could not meet them, accept their memorandum and assure them of justice. 

Staying on the fringes of town for three days with infants and children was difficult. The villagers stayed on for two—till news came that a security camp had now been set up in Mutvendi. 

Worried that their agricultural land could have been taken over to set up the camp, the villagers grew restless and wanted to return.  

On 15 January, a memorandum was handed over to the Bijapur tehsildar, to be handed over to his boss, the collector.  

The demands included the filing of a fresh first information report (FIR) based on Maase Sodi’s version of events that led to the death of her baby; suspension of officials who fired at civilians; creation of an investigation team, including members recommended by the villagers; dismantling of the Kawadgaon camp; stopping the road construction from Hiroli to Mutvendi; and an explanation why a camp in Mutvendi was built on 14 January when villagers were in Bijapur to talk to officials. 

New Roads & Security Camps

Wide roads and fortified security camps across Bastar have been a bone of contention between locals and the government. Protests against security camps and wide roads have intensified since 2020.

The government contention that two-lane roads were meant to develop Adivasi areas and security camps were meant to secure the area was rubbished by villagers, who said these roads were meant for mining companies. 

Locals said single-lane roads were all they needed, enough for their cycles and motorcycles.   

Over the last five years, the government has built 60 new security camps over Bastar, in addition to several established earlier. The police would not say how many. In Bijapur district, six new paramilitary camps have been built over the past month along a 54-km stretch of road from Gangaloor in Bijapur to Nelasnar, a village in Dantewada district.

After a fortnight, on 1 February, the collector agreed to meet the families of the victims and survivors along with Bhatia, Sori and activists of the Mulwasi Bachao Manch, a forum of Adivasi youth.  

“The collector gave all of us a patient hearing,” said Raghu Midiam, the president of the Adivasi forum.  

“We told him about the loss of lives and loss of land and livelihood, all in the name of development, without any consultation with us, made mandatory under the Panchayat Raj Extension to Scheduled Areas Act 1996.  The collector said he was very sorry about the death of baby Mangli but was not aware that the others who died were civilians,” said Midiam.   

“He promised to do his best to ensure justice,” said Midiam, “No deadlines were given and nothing was given in writing. The superintendent of police was not called in to be a part of the meeting. We left the collector’s office with his oral assurances.”

‘Tak, Tak, Tak… I Saw My Friends Fall’ 

It was during a journey by the second lot of protestors that three more Advasis died.

On 20 January 2024, 12-year-old Jimme Uika of Bellam-Nendra village had packed skirts and shirts to join seven other friends and extended relatives to join the protests at Gorna village. 

In a meeting two days earlier, the village elders had decided that a few members from Bellam-Nendra would be sent to Gorna to extend support to the protest against Mangli’s death. 

Jimme Uika knew little of the details of the incident. 

From heated discussions in village circles, she heard that police firing had killed the baby.  Jimme Uika had been to Gorna before, down the same forest path, spending a week sometime in 2023 at a protest against the new, wide roads bringing security camps into the villages.    

With a bag full of clothes and essentials, Jimme Uika and seven others set off from Bellam-Nendra for Gorna on the morning of January 20. They spent the previous night at Linga Maase’s home in Gottum, a hamlet of 24 houses about 2 km from Bellam-Nendra, before setting out for Gorna at daybreak, around 6.30 am. 

Half-an-hour into the walk over the Bellam hill in single file, as villagers living in forested villages do, Jimme Uika said she witnessed “horror” that she would never forget. 

Two of the older children in the group—15-year-old Nagi Punem from Nendra village and 14-year-old Soni Madkam, and 40-year-old Kosa Karam, both from Gottum—walked in the front, as the others followed. 

Jimme Uika was at the tail end, following 15-year-old Hidme Renga and 20-year-old Kamlesh Barse. 

All she heard in the silent forest, Uika recalled, was a sound, “tak-tak-tak”—the sound of bullets. 

As the rest of the group paused to consider what they had heard, they saw the two young teenage girls—Nagi Punem and Soni Madkam—and the oldest in the group, 40-year-old Kosa Karam, collapse to the forest floor. 

“I saw my friends fall,” said Jimme Uika, minutes after she had heard them talking and laughing.  

The firing appeared to go on for a while—”like an hour”—recalled Jimme  Uika. 

In panic, the rest of the group scrambled to hide behind trees, she said, slipping and falling over the stony hill. They heard women police officers yell, asking them not to run.  

She was soon approached by a policewoman, said Jimme Uika, who spoke with her in Gondi, a local Adivasi language, said Uika.

Capturing Jimme Uika, the lady officer tied her hands behind her back, made her sit down and hit her soles with a stick. All she asked while beating her was about their destination, said Jimme Uika, to which she responded that they were all headed to Gorna. 

The officer said nothing else, but kept beating her, as if venting her anger, said Jimme Uika. Asking her to keep quiet and not to cry, the officer took down the names of those who had died, Jimme  Uika added. She did not know what happened to her companions. 

Another Young Eyewitness

Ten-year-old Chhotu Podiam from Bellam-Nendra, one of the eight protestors marching to Gorna, was one of the two eyewitnesses to the incident on 20 January, the other being Jimme Uika, 12.  

Podiam and Jimme Uika's version of the events of the morning differ from what the police said in their press release of the same day, declaring that the three killed were “Maoists”. 

Podiam said he was walking behind Barse when he heard gunshots. He scrambled to hide behind trees, and after he did, he heard people groaning. He felt his heart pounding, he recalled. 

Everyone scattered to find cover, said Podiam. He could hear the police shouting, asking them to stay where they were and not to run. 

Podiam clung to a tree, before he felt a hand on his shoulder, roughly pulling him away, he said. Soon, with his hands tied, he was beaten with a stick by a Gondi-speaking policeman, who asked him about their destination and their names. 

Podiam recalled hearing another couple of shots being fired before the groans subsided. Both Podiam and Jimme Uika said they did not see any Maoists during the firing. 

The bullet-ridden bodies of Nagi Punem from Bellam-Nendra and Soni Madkam and Kosa Karam from Gottum para (hamlet) were identified by the five who survived—Jimme Uika, Podiam, Hidme Renga, Jogi Kalmu and Barse. 

Police personnel built makeshift stretchers from twigs and branches to carry the bodies out of the forest, wrapping them in plastic. 

The five, with their hands tied behind, walked through the forest path, leading to Gottum and Bellam-Nendra villages.  

Surrendered Maoists Turn Into Police

“Bellam hill is close by, and we heard the gunshots,” said 35-year-old Budi Uika, a farmer from Bellam-Nendra.  

Around noon on 20 January, women in Bellam-Nendra were stunned to see police walking the five, including the crying children, towards them. As they approached the police, the women said, they were beaten and driven away. Many raised their sarees to show bruises on their thighs, buttocks and waist.

As the five were being led out, police from the DRG took another adult woman, Budi Uika, from the Bellam-Nendra village, with them.  

Unlike some of the Maoists who had surrendered to join the police, Budi Uika and her husband Sanna Uika—who had spent many years as Maoists—surrendered in 2010 and returned home to raise a family.  

Budi and Sanna Uika have a 10-year-old son, but it has not been easy to lead a farmer’s life. Mahesh Renga of Bellam-Nendra explained why.  

“Police walon ka yahi hai—unke saath nahi ho to hamare saath raho, aur nahi to jail me sado” (‘The police think like this—if you are not with them, be with us, if not rot in prison’), laughed Renga, who escapes into the forest every time the “search party” comes to the village.  

Expecting the security forces to visit again on a random search, the men escaped into nearby forests while the women remained at home, he said. 

This has been a practice in villages across Bastar since mid-2000, when the Salwa Judum, a state-sponsored armed civil vigilante movement, was active.

Adivasis were recruited as special police officers (SPOs) in the Salwa Judum to fight the Maoist insurgency, before the Supreme Court in July 2011 declared the appointment of SPOs as “illegal”. 

The Supreme Court ordered the state of Chhattisgarh to “take all appropriate measures to prevent the operation of any group… that in any manner or form seek to take law into private hands, act unconstitutionally or otherwise violate the human rights of any person”.    

Accusing the government of Chhattisgarh of circumventing the Supreme Court order of 2011, sociologist Nandini Sundar wrote in July 2021 that the government had “merely renamed the SPOs” as DRG, the district reserve guard, enabling them “to commit the most excesses against their former fellow villagers”.  

The police practice of rounding up men available in villages and slapping on them what are locally called ‘Naxali’ cases—accusing them of being or aiding Maoists—continues, forcing them to leave homes and run into the forests during a security operation. 

Some Released, Some Arrested

On 21 January, the police released 12-year-old Jimme Uika and 10-year-old Podiam, when the families of the three Adivasis from Bellam-Nendra killed the previous day reached Bijapur to claim their bodies.  

Four days later on 24th January, 15-year-old Hidme Renga and 19-year-old Jogi Kalmu were also released. After meeting them, activist Bela Bhatia reached Basaguda police station along with their relatives, to file a complaint against the killings and arrests.

According to an FIR filed on 22 January, Kamlesh Barse and Budi Uika were arrested by the police on a search operation from the forests of Bellam-Nendra.

 The FIR recorded the recovery of a plastic bag containing a tiffin bomb, two detonators, a 5-meter-long codex wire (used to connect explosives) and 20 meters of electrical wire from “two suspicious persons”. 

The FIR said that “in absence of independent witnesses”, police personnel conducted the panchnama (site inspection memorandum) of the recovered materials. Cases were filed under the Explosives Substance Act, 1908, and the Chhattisgarh Public Security Act, 2005, against both.  

Punishment, if guilty, could mean a jail term of seven years.

Dead Teen’s Uncle, A Police Officer, Once A Maoist

In the Bellam-Nendra killings, the death of Soni Madkam was particularly ironic because she was the niece of Joga Madkam, currently with the DRG but once a noted commander in a Maoist battalion, where he served for 10 years. 

Since his surrender in 2010, Joga Madkam, called Rahul Madkam when he was with Maoists, has accompanied the police to identify Maoist supporters, said Kake Mangli, a 55-year-old resident of Bellam-Nendra. 

“Many villagers had extended a lot of support to Joga when he was with the Maoists, as he was one of our own clan,” said Kake Mangli, “Today, he is punishing us for that.” 

Kala Madkam, Soni’s father and Joga’s brother, had called him, he said, to ask if he was aware of what the police had done to his niece and if he was present in the gasht or police search party.  

“I told him, ‘you know better, my little girl is not a Maoist or a supporter,’” said Kala Madkam. “How can you pass this off as Maoists being killed?” 

All Joga Madkam said, according to his brother, was that he was not aware of the incident and that he was in the state capital of Raipur and could not travel to Bellam-Nendra for the burial ceremony of his niece. 

The two teens and the man who died with them were killed in a firefight between Maoists and police, SP Bijapur Varshney, told Article 14 on 4 February. He said the trio had cases against them, which he was willing to share.  

It was “a figment of imagination” that other minors were taken to the district thana or were kept in custody for two days, said Varshney.    

‘We Did Not Expect them to Shoot’ 

According to a 30 January Bijapur police press release, a joint operation by the DRG, the Bastar Fighters (a tribal force raised within the CRPF) and the CRPF clashed with Maoists near the Indravati river, resulting in injuries to several cadres. 

The press release made no mention of the death of Ramesh Oyam, the fifth civilian to die in Bastar in police firing in January 2024.

Ramesh Oyam, a resident of a village called Bodga, was the father of an eight-day-old baby. He had gone to his aunt’s house on the morning of 30 January to get some hens to cook for guests arriving for the naming ceremony of his newborn. 

On his way home, Ramesh Oyam and his 35-year-old brother-in-law Payko Kunjam wanted to take a quick dip in the nearby Indravati river at around 12 noon, said Kunjam.

Speaking to Article 14 over the phone, Kunjam said they ran into security forces crossing the Indravati, presumably on their way back to their base at the tehsil headquarters of Bhairamgarh. Kunjam said they were aware that a search had been underway since the previous evening.

The security forces were 400 m away from Ramesh Oyam and Kunjam, when they suddenly opened fire, according to Kunjam.

“We did not expect them to shoot,” he said.  

 As they fired, with no place to hide by the river side, Ramesh Oyam and Kunjam started to run. That’s when, said Kunjam, a second gunshot hit Ramesh Oyam’s ear, killing him instantly. 

The security forces who shot at them would have clearly seen that their gunshots had killed someone, but they did not return, said Kunjam.

This reporter spoke to Kunjam on 31 January, as he travelled to Bhairamgarh with Ramesh Oyam’s wife and infant daughter, to bring the killing to the attention of officials.

Ramesh Oyam’s elder brother Raju, employed with the Chhattisgarh police special task force (STF), had also reached Bhairamgarh to be with his brother’s family.   

Article 14 sought comment on Ramesh Oyam’s death from Bijapur SP Varshney, who acknowledged over the phone on 4 February that a civilian had died. 

But the security forces had reported to their base in Bhairamgarh, about 8 km across the Indravati river where Ramesh Oyam died, by 12.30 pm—around the same time Oyam was shot dead, as claimed by villagers—said Varshney.

Varshney said he was convinced Ramesh Oyam died when Maoists lobbed a grenade at security forces after they had crossed the river. He could not specify the time at which this happened, or whether his men had returned fire. 

‘His Body Had Knife Marks’

According to a 28 January press release from the Dantewada police, 40-year-old Podiya Mandavi, a farmer with a family of four children from the village of  Pedka, was taken into police custody on 27 January, at around 5 pm. He was arrested for his alleged involvement in an IED explosion in April 2023 in Dantewada, in which 11 people died, including 10 DRG personnel. 

As his health deteriorated, Podiya Mandavi was rushed to the Dantewada district hospital, where he died around midnight, the police press release said. 

Podiya Mandavi’s family disputed the police’s version of his death. According to them, he was detained by the police on 27 January while on his way to a murga bazaar or cock fight, along with his friend, Ganga Mandavi. While Ganga was released midway, Mandavi was taken to the thana or police station at Aranpur. 

When his family went to look for him at Aranpur thana the same evening, they were sent back, with the police demanding his Aadhaar card. Early next morning, the police reached Pedka to inform his family that Podiya  Mandavi had fallen ill and died in the district hospital.

“Podiya’s body had knife marks and bore signs of being beaten,” said Mahadev Muchaki, the sarpanch of the nearby village of Tenali. 

Podiya Mandavi’s family tried to register an FIR at the Aranpur thana, but the police refused, said adivasi activist Soni Sori.  

“A magisterial inquiry is underway and once the report is submitted to the magistrate, further steps will be accordingly taken,” said Dantewada SP Gaurav Rai. 

There is a history of tension between the police and villagers in the area.

After the IED blast in April 2023, close to the Aranpur thana, the police had rounded up  23 youths over a week, including four minors from Taneli and Pedka villages, accusing them of involvement.  

While the four minors were released after six months, the other 19, including one of Muchaki’s brothers and two of Podiya Mandavi’s brothers, are in prison.    

Rai said no chargesheet had been filed against Podiya Mandavi. He denied the family’s accusations that he was beaten in custody, Rai said the police followed “due procedure”, including a post-mortem, which will be handed over to the magistrate. The magisterial enquiry is underway. 

Civilians Caught In The Conflict 

“While ‘fake encounters’ in Bastar are not new, the sudden increase in incidents since 1 January is alarming,” said Bhatia, the human-rights lawyer previously quoted. She has been living in Bastar and tracking the violence in the troubled region for over a decade. 

“The police assertion that there was cross-firing in each incident is refuted by the families of victims, survivors and other villagers,” said Bhatia. 

“The youngest victim of this spate of killings was only six months old. Two others were minor girls,” said Bhatia. “If Adivasi villagers get killed in their own homes, villages or its vicinity, where are they to go?  Which place is safe?  Can targeting civilians  count as legitimate counter-insurgency?” 

Civilians in Bastar have also been beaten or killed by Maoists, when suspected of being police informers.  

Government informers are called gopniya sainik or “secret soldiers”, who inform security forces of Maoist movements in the villages, a practice that has endangered their lives, said locals.  

Untrained civilians, these sainiks are given a phone to stay in touch with their handlers. They visit places where they sense a meeting by Maoists could be held and inform security forces. 

This reporter spoke to one such gopniya sainik, a woman who quit after two years, once she believed that she was, perhaps, responsible for bloodshed in her own village. 

The woman, who had cleared her 12th standard examinations, said that she was paid “a good amount of money” and was sometimes called to Hyderabad in the neighbouring state of Telengana for meetings with “senior officers”. 

She described her task as “simple”, but acknowledged that there was “a very high risk” of dying. That is borne out by police records over 23 years: 53 gopniya sainiks have died in Chhattisgarh, with a rise in such deaths after 2015. 

Back in Bijapur, as the villagers prepared to return to Mutvendi on 15 January after their meeting with the collector failed, Maase Sodi and her husband Baman Sodi quickly packed to return to the other three children back home.  

“Those jawans who shot my baby should be punished,” said Maase Sodi.  

It had been five days since she had left home seeking justice for her dead baby. Maase Sodi was discharged from the hospital on 9 January, after being technically in police custody for medical treatment since 1 January.  

“I need to go back to my children,” she said. 

After returning home to Mutvendi, Maase Sodi joined the march to Bijapur on 11 January, to meet the district collector and demand justice for the dead. It took her one-and-half days to reach home. 

Her husband talked of the new security camp in Mutvendi. “There will be other problems we have to be prepared for,” he said.

(Malini Subramaniam is an independent journalist based in Bastar.)

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