BRUTAL ATTACK ON ROZGAR ADHIKAR YATRA

Police attack on the Rozgar Adhikar Yatra (eye-witness account from Reetika Khera)

The Rozgar Adhikar Yatra was brutally attacked and lathi-charged on 4 June by a group of policemen in civilian clothes, armed with loaded AK-47s.

The incident happened in village Balrampur of Surguja district. The Yatra reached Balrampur around 8:30 p.m. and a public meeting began, much like any of the other peaceful gatherings that have taken place on the Yatra's route. Within a few minutes, two policemen in civilian clothes reached the spot on motorcycles and told all the yatris to meet the tehsildar immediately. The yatris politely told them that they would prefer to continue the meeting since we were late by more than five hours.

The policemen left in anger and returned within fifteen minutes with three or four other men, also on motorcycles, in civilian clothes, armed with lathis and guns. Without any warning, they disrupted the meeting and loaded their guns. The local villagers and the yatris began running towards their tractor and bus respectively. The men with the lathis and guns started shouting at those gathered there, abusing them using foul language. Initially they were just kicking chairs, breaking the lights and the mike, but then they started hitting the bus, the yatris and villagers with their lathis. They also pointed a loaded gun at the driver, forced him into the bus, and ordered him to get going. For good measure the policemen hit the bus as it was leaving and broke a window as well as the left indicator glass.

Several women on the bus were bruised including Naziya, a social work student from Mumbai who is working with Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan, and Zulekha a freelance journalist from Chhattisgarh. As I was making my way to the bus, I was hit by a lathi on my legs. One of the men tried to stop this and said, "Don't hit her – it's a lady". But this did not stop his colleague who proceeded to hit my arm. Kaustav, a PhD student from JNU was hit on the head and his cheek was bleeding. Samar, an activist from Progressive Students Union, was hit on the knee. Purnaram from Tilonia village in Rajasthan was also hit on his waist. Jean Drèze (economist) was hit the most. He was making a phone call across the road while this was happening. On hearing the noise and screams he made a dash for the venue of the meeting. But as soon as he arrived, he was surrounded by four of these men and beaten with lathis. The yatris were lucky to escape without any major injury but the fate of the local residents is still unclear. We are all deeply concerned about their safety.

According to local residents, this incident is typical of the arbitrary exercise of police power in the area. Most of them seem to live in deep fear of state authorities. Even making a phone call from the next village after the incident proved extremely difficult as local residents were very scared of being targeted if they offered us any assistance.

On 5 June some of us went to Ambikapur to file a FIR with the police authorities. We were able to meet the IG, A.N. Upadhyay, after three trips to his office. While the IG accepted that this was a "very unfortunate incident", he did not give us any assurance that action would be taken against those responsible for it. The SP (Balrampur), B.P. Kalluri, was also present for a short while at the meeting and shockingly, he denied that any lathi-charge had taken place. He also stated that for the police, "every outsider is a suspected Naxalite, until proved otherwise".

The press release issued by the police authorities was even more shocking. It contained many inaccurate statements and lies. For instance, the yatris were allegedly raising slogans such as "tehsildar haay-haay" and "police prashaasan murdabad", which is untrue. Secondly, it claimed that the yatris tried to block the road when they were asked to leave. This is also untrue – once lathi-charged the yatris barely had enough time to scramble to the safety of the bus. In any case there was absolutely no traffic on the road at that time of the evening and it would have been pointless to block it. Thirdly, the press release stated that among the yatris were "young Nepali-looking" girls, which led the police to suspect that they were Naxalites. Finally, this press release claims that the yatris were put on the bus "with respect" (sammanjanak tareeke se) towards Ramanujganj, where their next programme had been scheduled. One wonders what happens when people are not treated with respect. In any case, it is hard to know what to make of a statement which says that the visitors were suspected Naxalites and proceeds to claim that these suspected Naxalites were "sent off respectfully" for their next programme!

Reetika Khera is a PhD student at the Delhi School of Economics.

Last updated: 7 June 2005