The Chhattisgarh government placed a probe report in the state assembly on Monday about the May 2013 incident in Ehadsameta village of Bastar in which eight persons were killed in the CRPF firing. While the security forces had then claimed that the deceased were Naxals, the probe commission headed by retired high court judge VK Agrawal says that all the killed persons were Adivasis. It was an unarmed gathering of Adivasis and the firing by the security personnel was not in self-defence, the report says. As the commission indicts the forces for firing in 바카라haste바카라, let바카라s revisit that summer afternoon.
Of all my reporting about the mutilated bodies and blood puddles in Dandakaranya, the Ehadsameta killings remain the most gruesome State action I was a witness to.
It was the afternoon of May 19, 2013. The corpses were lying under the merciless sun in the jungle. On Friday night, 17 May, the forces fired at a gathering of the Adivasi festival of Beej Pundum in Ehadsameta village of Bijapur district. Among the deceased were Karam Joga and his 13-year-old son Badru, Karam Pandu and his 14-year-old son Guddu.
But the agony did not end with their killings. The bodies should have been handed over to the families, but were lying in an open field for a mandatory postmortem, under 45-degree sun, decomposing, badly swollen and emanating an unbearable smell. CRPF men, face covered, guarded them with X-95 and AK-47 rifles with an Under Barrel Grenade Launcher.
I stood before the corpses, with a notebook and camera.
바카라Jara pet par chira laga (cut the stomach open),바카라 government doctor B.R.Pujari said. His face was covered. An Adivasi, Suklu, came forward and cut open a naked body. Red worms protruded out from the stomach with a sound. 바카라Dead bodies become like balloons. When you cut them open, they produce a sound like flatulence,바카라 a CRPF soldier explained. As relatives held the corpses and turned them sideways and upside down, the doctor examined them, poking and prodding with a twig he had picked up from the ground, and made a record in his register.
바카라Don바카라t you have another blade?바카라 Dr Pujari asked his colleagues. The doctor had not touched any corpse so far. Suklu, in his torn green vest and blue underpants, had made several incisions in five corpses with two blades. The doctor suddenly thought of changing the blade. But there was none, let alone any other medical equipment. Suklu was given only one pair of surgical gloves for the whole process. Without changing gloves, he slit open bodies, inserted his hand into the stomachs, pulled out the innards to enable the doctor바카라s examination, before shoving them inside again. The bodies were facing the sky, mouths wide open, teeth darkened. The villagers watched the public spectacle of their relatives바카라 bodies.
One corpse wore blue underpants, its torso naked. Remove the underpants, a government officer said. A man, perhaps his brother, came forward and pulled it down. A deceased, stark naked, his genitals ghastly, like an inflated black balloon.
It is mandatory under the law to conduct the post-mortem of people killed in an encounter with security forces, and to prepare an official report on the cause of death. A post-mortem, the Supreme Court mandates, must be conducted by two doctors in a district hospital. Videos and photographs should be taken to ensure that fake encounters are detected. The police may claim that it was an 바카라encounter killing바카라, which denotes crossfire, but the post-mortem might show that the person was killed from a very short distance, with a pistol to the head. The killer may lie, the corpse may turn silent, but the wound will reveal the trajectory and the angle of the bullet.
Dr Pujari admitted that it was against the law to conduct post-mortems in the open, and that they should never be done in the presence of the police. 바카라Under certain conditions, an officer with the rank of SDM and above can give permission to conduct it otherwise,바카라 he tried to explain.
SDM Virendra Bahadur Panchbhai said, 바카라The only requirement for a post-mortem is adequate light. Other things can be relaxed in special situations.바카라
An hour later, the bodies were handed over to the relatives who carried them on cots to Gangalur police station, a few kilometres away. The women relatives of the deceased had been protesting at the thana, having screamed their lungs out for hours and still wailing. They hurled stones at the police station and nearby CRPF camp. They knew only Gondi and Halbi but managed a few Hindi abuses. 바카라Wapas jao바카라 wapas jao..,바카라 they shouted at the CRPF camp and tried to break open its lock.
Their men somehow persuaded them to return. After all, those who had left would have to be given farewells. And then began a several hour journey through the difficult terrain with corpses tied to cots. Other villagers had prepared pyres at the outskirts of Ehadsameta. Father and son, Joga and Badru, were laid down on one pyre. 바카라It바카라s not unusual among Adivasis. When a person loves someone a lot, we cremate them together,바카라 a villager told me.
Soon after the incident, following my series of investigative reports about the killings, the then BJP government had ordered a judicial commission. The report, submitted to the state government in September 2021, has now finally been tabled in the assembly. The report emphatically says that the security forces mistook the Adivasis to be Naxals and underlines that 바카라there was no imminent danger to the life of the security personnel바카라, and hence the firing 바카라was not in self-defence바카라. They opened fire 바카라erroneously, in haste, and out of panic바카라, says the report.
About the death of a CRPF personnel in the incident, the report says that there was no evidence to show that Adivasis had firearms, and the constable perhaps sustained the injury 바카라due to cross-firing by his own squad members바카라.
The report has come after a long ordeal of the villagers who had to travel several hundred kilometres to record their testimony before the probe commission. It now needs to be seen what action will be taken against the security forces.
