An Adivasi woman in her burnt house in Dantewada

India’s security budget grows up every year and even the economic crisis does not make any difference to it. The Indian government spends most of its money for the security of its own people. Apart from this, the government also has special budget allocation for dealing with the internal security threat and several state governments also spend the money on security, allocated for the Tribal Sub-plan. Ironically, the government (s) use the money to kill the Adivasis, which is supposed to be spent for their welfare and development. The innocent Adivasis are victimized most of the time in the process of dealing with the security threat. The fastest growing state of Chhatisgarh is the living example of it, where the Adivasis have been victimized by the paramilitary forces, local police and Koya Commandos (an armed Tribal police comprising of surrendered Maoists) but instead of taking action against the perpetrators, the state justifies their inhuman acts and shield them.

In the recent incident, Chhattisgarh’s Koya commandos, the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and CoBRA battalions burnt more than 300 houses and food grains, raped 5 Adivasi women and killed 5 men of Timapuram, Morpalli and Tarmetla villages of Dantewada between March 11 and March 16, 2011 alleging them as the Maoists during the ongoing special police operations against the Maoists in the region. The security forces comprising of 200 Koyas, 150 CoBRA and 50 CRPF Jawans carried out intensive operations in the vicinity on the report of a surrendered Maoist, who claimed about the existence of Maoists’ arms factory at Morpalli village and also the intelligence inputs indicated about the presence of 100 Maoists in the vicinity.  However, the security forces neither find any arms factory nor the Maoists. The police also accepted that the people killed during the operations were not the Maoists but the villagers. Indeed, these people who were victimized by the security forces were neither Maoists nor their supporters but they were innocent people living in their ancestors’ villages. Can P. Chidambaram, the corporate Home Minister tell us what kinds of anti-naxal operations are these where innocent villagers were killed, women were raped and their houses, clothes and food-grains were burnt by the security forces? Continue reading →