Deep inside the forests of Bastar in southern Chhattisgarh, Maoist insurgents drawn from local Adivasi communities have been locked in a low-intensity war with the Indian state for nearly four decades. This year, Chhattisgarh police claim to have made a major breakthrough in the conflict, killing 141 Maoists in 38 encounters, higher than any annual tally seen in the past, barring 2009.
This series brings you the stories behind those numbers by travelling to the sites where the encounters took place and speaking to the families of those killed.
She lay on the ground with her head turned sideways, nose and mouth bloodied, eyes partially open. The dead woman in the photograph, according to a press statement of the Chhattisgarh police, was Sanni alias Sundri of Vattekal village, a member of company number six of the People’s Liberation Guerilla Army, the armed wing of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist).
The statement said she was among six Maoists killed during a gunfight between the security forces and the insurgents in the forests near Gobel village in Narayanpur district on June 7.
According to the police, she was no ordinary Maoist – she had a bounty on her head. Any security personnel who killed her was entitled to receive a reward of Rs 8 lakh from the state.
But at her home in Vattekal village, the woman’s father, Ishwar Kumeti, denied his daughter was a Maoist.
Showing her Aadhaar card and Ayushman Bharat health insurance card issued by the government, Kumeti said his daughter’s name was Manbati Kumeti, not Sanni. Most knew her by her nickname, Kaari, he said. She was 23 when she died.
Kaari’s brother Balku Kumeti, who works as a mid-day meal cook in the village’s primary school, said she was home on the morning of June 7 when news that the security forces were approaching the village set off a wave of panic. Everyone, except breast-feeding women, infants and the elderly, fled into the forest – a common response in villages falling in the Maoist-dominated areas in southern Chhattisgarh, where Adivasi villagers fear reprisals from state forces on suspicion that they are providing support to the insurgents.
While others came back to the village by the evening of June 7, Kaari did not. On June 8, the police released photographs of six bodies, which they claimed were of the Maoists killed in the encounter. Five bodies were in uniform. The sixth was not. This woman in a chequered shirt was Kaari, to her family’s shock.
“When I went to claim her body along with my father, we told the senior officers present that they had made a mistake,” said Baliram Kumeti, a second brother of Kaari. “But the officers insisted she was a Maoist.” He said the Narayanpur superintendent of police told them “he will look into the matter”.
When Scroll contacted him for a response, police superintendent Pushkar Sharma dismissed the family’s allegation. He said all bodies had been identified by surrendered Maoists from the area who were familiar with the cadres and could be trusted to accurately identify them.
The list of the names and photographs released by the police mentioned the reward amount for each of those killed. The total came to Rs 38 lakh, with the individual bounties ranging from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 8 lakh.
“The size of the reward is based on the seniority of rank and the profile of the individual in the party,” Sharma explained.
When a Maoist surrenders to the police, he or she is given the reward as rehabilitation assistance, the superintendent said. But when a Maoist is killed in a security operation, “the reward is distributed among the team that went into the operation”. There is no reward for arresting a Maoist. “That is part of our regular duties,” he said.
Asked if this creates an incentive for the police to kill Maoists in cold blood as opposed to arresting them and bringing them to justice, Sharma said the reward is distributed among a large number of security personnel and often the individual share comes to a negligible amount. “On paper it may appear to be a large amount, but when shared with a large team it is a very small amount, hardly an incentive,” he said.
Bastar Inspector General of Police, Pattilingam Sundarraj, echoed this view. “No one makes a fortune by conducting anti-Naxal operations and neutralising Maoists,” he said. Giving rewards for successful anti-Maoist operations is an old policy, he pointed out. Besides, the money is distributed to the “core team” involved in the operation only after a committee has “scrutinised every aspect of the operation, including the medical reports and magisterial enquiry reports”.
Asked how many personnel in total had participated in the June 7 anti-Maoist operation, Narayanpur police superintendent Sharma refused to reveal the number, citing security reasons. The Inspector General, too, declined to specify how many personnel were usually part of a “core team”.
This lack of transparency is worrying.
This year, Chhattisgarh Police claims to have killed 141 Maoists in 38 encounters in the Bastar region – the highest annual tally in decades. Many of those killed had bounties on their heads. Scroll was able to source police statements, either directly or through media reports, for 28 encounters. The reward money for these adds up to Rs 5.42 crore. The total amount is likely to be higher since information was not available for 10 encounters.
Have the bounties skewed the way security operations are conducted and led to questionable killings?
Scroll travelled to remote villages scattered across three districts and met the families of 37 of the 141 people killed in anti-Maoist operations in Bastar this year. Of these, 12 families disputed the police’s claims and said the person killed was a civilian, not a Maoist. The police have declared rewards for three of them.
Among the remaining 25 dead, whose families acknowledged they were Maoists, 20 had bounties on their heads. But a majority of cases hardly fitted the description of reward-carrying Maoists – their families said they were young, low-ranking, unarmed cadres, many of whom had joined the insurgent group less than a year ago.
Rekawaya gram panchayat lies at the intersection of the three districts of Narayanpur, Bijapur and Dantewada. The Indravati river flows through the thickly forested area. Boats made of hollowed out trees transport people across the river from Bijapur’s Bhairamgarh block, barring in the summer, when it is possible to wade through its rocky, shallow parts.
This is what some of the security personnel did on May 23, as part of a security operation called “Operation Jal Shakti”.
Although Rekawaya comes under the jurisdiction of Narayanpur’s Orchha block and police station, it was Dantewada district police that took credit for the operation.
According to a press statement released by the police on May 24, eight bodies of uniformed Maoists as well as seven weapons had been recovered after the end of the operation that lasted 72 hours. The statement said some people suspected of planting explosive devices to target the security forces had also been detained.
The same day, villagers sent a handwritten note to Adivasi leader Soni Sori, who lives in Dantewada. It listed the names of 40 people who they said had been detained by the police.
Later, the police released a list of the names and photographs of those killed in the encounter, mentioning the amount of reward money each of them carried, which came to a total of Rs 31 lakh.
Two men on the police’s list of the eight dead Maoists, however, also featured in the villagers’ handwritten note as among the 40 civilians detained by the police.
What explained this divergence? I travelled to the area on July 11 to meet the families of the two men.
One of them was Bugur Jhurri. The police had identified him as a member of the local Maoist guerilla squad, carrying a reward of Rs 2 lakh. But Bugur’s wife, Urmila Jhurri, denied her husband worked with the Maoists.
The couple lived in Itul village with their children, the youngest of whom was a three-month-old baby who was suckling from her mother’s breast when I met her.
“My husband had gone to collect mahua in Bodga village when he was picked up and killed,” Urmila Jhurri said, in a feeble but clear voice.
She explained that since their village lies on hill terrain, there are hardly any mahua trees nearby, which forces residents to walk afar to villages like Bodga, which are nestled in the valley, to look for the economically lucrative mahua flowers.
On the morning of May 23, Bugur left home soon after the roosters crowed, to walk to the forests near Bodga village, she said. On his way back, when he heard about the large presence of security forces in the forests, he decided to halt at his uncle’s house in Poropadko, a village only an hour’s distance by foot to Itul, she added. The halt, as it turns out, was fatal for Bugur.
In Poropadko, too, said Bugur’s uncle Manku Jhurri, word that the security forces were about to storm the village led everyone to flee to the forest. Bugur followed Manku’s son, Sonu Jhurri, and another relative, Gorra Jhurri, but the police fired at the men, said Manku. One bullet hit Sonu in the back and emerged from close to his stomach, Manku said, using hand gestures to explain the injuries. Gorra was hit by two bullets, one on his right palm and the other on his back.
Both Sonu and Gorra were injured but managed to escape. They saw Bugur being captured by the security forces, they told their relatives when they tumbled into Itul village late at night. The next morning, Manku’s son, Sonu, died of the bullet injuries. Gorra survived.
As for Bugur, Manku and the other family members suspect that after he fell into the hands of the security forces, he was taken to the encounter site where he was shot in cold blood and declared to be a reward-carrying Maoist.
The other man whose name featured both in the police list and the village handwritten note was Manglu Jhurri from Poropadko village. The police press release identified him as a member of platoon number 16 of the Indravati area committee of the CPI (Maoist), carrying a reward of Rs 2 lakh on his head. But his family firmly denied he was a Maoist.
Rambati Jhurri, Manglu’s niece, said both she and her uncle were both among the 40 people that the police rounded up the morning after the encounter. They were herded like cattle through the forest, she said.
The men in the group were made to carry the bodies from the encounter site, wading through Indravati river, till they reached a point where police vehicles and ambulances were waiting. The 35-km-long journey ended at the Dantewada police station. It was only after they reached the police station that Rambati realised her uncle was no longer part of the group.
Manglu’s family suspects he was separated from the rest, taken in another direction, killed by the security forces, and shown to be a reward-carrying Maoist.
After she saw the photograph of his dead body in the police press release, Manglu’s wife, Mandi Jhurri, rushed to Dantewada police station. She alleged the officer in charge of the police station threatened to withhold her husband’s body unless she signed a statement saying Manglu had been with the Maoists for five years. A young literate neighbour, Vinesh Podiam, who was accompanying her, read out the statement. Mandi Jhurri refused to sign it.
The family then contacted Adivasi leader Soni Sori, who came to the police station. Sori recalled asking the police officer: “The villagers are not denying the other six killed were Maoists, then why are you insisting the wife sign incorrect statements?” The officer eventually allowed the family to take Manglu’s body, she said.
The Dantewada police superintendent, Gaurav Rai, denied the allegations that two of the eight killed in the Rekawaya encounter were civilians. “It is not surprising that villagers claim their family member is not a Maoist,” he said. “That innocent villagers were killed in the encounter is a narrative pushed by the Maoists,” he added.
However, these are not the only cases where the police stand accused of killing innocent people and passing them off as reward-carrying Maoists. Ten villagers killed in Bijapur’s Pidiya village in an encounter in May that the People’s Union for Civil Liberties investigated and labelled “fake”, have been shown to have bounties of their heads.
Coming back to the case of the Rekawaya encounter, what happened to the rest of the 38 people who had been rounded up? The villagers said the families of 13 people were able to secure their release from police custody by showing their Aadhaar cards, among other things. Another ten people, including four minors, too, were released but only after the police made them pose as surrendered Maoists by making them wear white T-shirts with the logo of the surrender scheme called “Lon Varratu”, which in Gondi language means “come back home”.
The case of 15 others was intriguing. On May 28, five days after the encounter, the Dantewada police announced that 15 people, including seven women, had been arrested near Gumalnar village for using explosives to target the security forces. Gumalnar is about 40 km from Rekawaya. Yet, the 15 people arrested in Gumalnar are none other than the residents of Rekawaya gram panchayat whose names feature in the handwritten list of detainees circulated by the villagers on May 24. They are currently lodged in Jagdalpur prison.
When asked about the odd circumstance of the Rekawaya residents being arrested in Gumalnar, police superintendent Gaurav Rai said these were two separate incidents with separate first information reports.
Even in instances where families of those killed in gunfights acknowledge they were Maoists, questions have been raised about whether they were killed instead of being arrested because of the reward money on offer.
Of the Rs 5.29 crore given to security personnel as reward money, one encounter alone accounts for Rs 1.85 crore. It took place in the forests of Chhote Bethiya in Kanker district on April 16. The police claim it was the most successful anti-Maoist operation till date since the security forces managed to kill 29 Maoists, the highest number in a single strike so far.
While Rs 1.78 crore was announced as the reward money for the Chhote Bethiya killings, another Rs 7.55 lakh was given as reward for recovering weapons and other equipment.
In the villages of the dead Maoists, however, the families of many of those killed said they were unarmed cadres who had joined the People’s Liberation Guerilla Army less than a year ago.
One such case was that of 21-year-old Sunila Madkam. When I visited her family in Dunga village in Narayanpur’s Orchha block on May 9, her mother Sukdi Madkam, her father Koso Madkam, and her siblings were busy arranging tendu leaves gathered from the forests into neat bundles of 50 leaves each. The family was still grieving Sunila’s death but could not afford to put work on hold, especially since the seasonal collection and sale of tendu leaves was their primary source of income.
Sukdi said Sunila was the third among her six children. She studied in a government primary school till Class 3 but dropped out after the nearest middle school moved 60 km away to Orchha block headquarters.
Last year, after spending some time hanging around Maoist cadres, Sunila and her young friends, Sithal Mandavi, Sheela Kunjam, Geeta Kunjam, and Pintu Oyam, decided to formally join the People’s Liberation Guerilla Army. They did this in August, soon after the sowing season ended, her mother said.
Sunila last came home in the second week of March, after her maternal grandmother passed away. “I told her to be home, but she said she would visit home as and when she can and left,” the mother recalled.
Barely a month later, Sunila died in the April 16 encounter. Four of her friends, all of whom were recent Maoist recruits, were also killed. While one of them was identified by the police as a Maoist carrying a reward of Rs 2 lakh, the others, including Sunila, were shown to be Maoists carrying rewards of Rs 8 lakh each.
In the eight months she spent in the Maoist armed wing, Sunila “could not have done anything to earn such a reward,” her brother said.
At Sheela Kunjam’s home in Bhairamgarh’s Utla village, her father, Jogu Kunjam, also reacted with a sense of disbelief to the police claims – the young people were recent recruits, he pointed out, and had barely done anything to be considered reward-worthy by the police.
The Maoists had not even given them weapons yet, other villagers who gathered in a group to speak to me, claimed. The party is short of weapons and cartridges to distribute among new recruits, they said. Besides, why would the party take the risk of losing its weapons to new recruits who were more likely to surrender to the police, an elderly man asked with a laugh.
If the young cadres were unarmed, why could they not have been arrested and brought to prison, the villagers asked.
Strikingly, even the police statement had not listed any weapons against the names of Sunila and her four friends – only seven of the 29 Maoists were shown to have rifles and automatic guns. Kanker police superintendent Indira Kalyan Elesela said this disclosure was “based on the weapon they carry as per the record” and was “not related to crime scene”.
Bastar Inspector General Sundarraj disputed the families’ claims about the young Maoists being unarmed recent recruits. He noted that often young people work informally with Maoist organisations like the Bal Sangham and Chetna Natya Manch before they formally join the party.
However, he acknowledged that most of those killed were relatively junior cadres. He said senior Maoists “shamefully use lower cadres as their human shield” and escape.
Police officials have often maintained their main targets are senior Maoist leaders, not junior cadres, who they claim are working under duress and are keen to surrender. If that is the case, then why not arrest the junior cadres, instead of killing them? Sundarraj said avoiding killing young insurgents was “not so simple” since “the jawans have to respond to the immediate danger and risks involved”.
But the families of Sunila and the other young Maoist cadres say they have reason to believe that the killings did not happen in the heat of the moment – they suspect the young cadres had been tortured before being shot dead.
When they went to Kanker to collect the bodies, they were shocked to see the nature of the injuries, Sunila’s brother said. Barring Pintu Oyam, who had a gunshot wound on his forehead, the others had injuries on their heads, hands and thighs that appeared to be wounds from being hit with heavy objects like stones, he alleged.
Sundarraj disputed these allegations: “Our jawans will not do that and are not trained to do so. The dead are respected, even if they are Maoists.” He claimed that the Maoists have, on several occasions, defaced and mutilated the bodies of security personnel.
In a statement released two days after the Chhote Bethiya encounter, the CPI (Maoist) acknowledged that all 29 killed were Maoist cadres. But the statement claimed that other cadres who had managed to escape the encounter had revealed that only 12 people had been shot during the gunfight. The rest, the Maoist statement alleged, had been rounded up, made to walk two kilometres to a memorial erected by the Maoists, where they were tortured and killed.
On April 23, a week after the gunfight, I trekked deep inside the forests to the encounter site and the memorial. At the encounter site, I found tell-tale signs of a gunfight – gunshot traces on trees, marks of dried blood on the stones, sachets of Electral that were most likely used by the Maoists, and empty packets of dried snacks and tetra packs of Amul lassi, possibly used by the security personnel.
In the houses near the memorial, villagers were reluctant to speak about what had happened. They denied hearing the sound of gunfire, although they admitted that security forces, present in large numbers, had threatened villagers from stepping out of their houses.
There were no eyewitnesses I found who could vouch for the Maoist claim that the security personnel had rounded up and killed the cadres in cold blood.
However, in the case of the Korcholi-Nendra encounter in Bijapur, as previously reported in this series, two women residents of a village had provided a detailed eye-witness account of the security personnel detaining a woman in the aftermath of a gunfight and shooting her dead in cold blood.
Similar concerns have been raised about another encounter in Bijapur’s Chipurbhatti village that took place on March 27. Soon after the gunfight ended, the police declared they had killed six Maoists, carrying a total of Rs 14 lakh reward money. One of them was identified as Punem Nagesh, the deputy commander of a platoon of the People’s Liberation Guerilla Army. According to the police, he carried a reward of Rs 5 lakh.
However, the same day, photographs surfaced on social media showing a man sitting on the ground, with his hands tied, surrounded by police personnel. Locals identified him as none other than Nagesh.
When asked about the allegation that Nagesh had been killed after he had been arrested, Sundarraj said: “We are looking into this”.
All photographs by Malini Subramaniam
Also read: ‘Dead Maoist talking’: The aftermath of a security operation in Bastar