Raipur: A week after Bastar police issued a statement claiming that seven suspected Maoists were killed in a joint operation by security forces in the Abujhmad jungles, activists and villagers have alleged that five of the seven killed were villagers working in their fields and four children were injured and that when the police opened fire.
Police have denied the activists’ claim, saying that those killed were not villagers and that the children were used as human shields by the Maoists during the encounter on December 11.
Soni Sori, a tribal rights activist based in Dantewada, who visited the village on December 14, alleged that five of the seven killed in the encounter were villagers from nearby settlements.
“According to villagers, personnel from the District Reserve Guard (DRG) arrived around 8 or 9 am on December 11 while people were working in the fields. Families were present at the time. Villagers have alleged that individuals were apprehended and shot one by one without any exchange of fire. It is also alleged that even Maoists captured in the jungle were executed after being taken into custody,” Sori said in a statement.
Activists also alleged that the four injured children, including a 13-year-old from Kummam village who sustained neck and bullet fragment injuries, a 9-year-old with a head injury, a 12-year-old injured in the buttocks (whose father was killed), and a 13-year-old with injuries in the hand and foot, did not receive medical help for three days following the encounter.
They are now being treated at hospitals in Raipur, Jagdalpur and Dantewada, said Sori.
Vijja, father of the 13-year-old girl from Kummam village injured in the encounter, said, “I was working in the field when the firing started. I rushed to the family kitchen, and then she came to me showing her bullet wounds. Two days later, Sori arrived and we shifted the girl to Dantewada, where the doctors referred her to Raipur.”
On December 11, security forces, including the DRG, Special Task Force (STF), and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), claimed to have killed seven Maoists, including two female cadres, in an encounter in South Abujhmad jungle, which falls under Narayanpur district. The forces also reported recovering a large cache of weapons. However, the police did not mention the children’s injuries in their statement.
The incident occurred in the villages of Kummam and Lekawada under Rekhawaya Panchayat in Narayanpur district.
Sori, in her statement, added that many villagers fled during the police firing, which caused families to separate. “Currently, several individuals are injured in the village, but fear of detention has prevented them from seeking medical assistance. Many are also still missing. When villagers saw the police press release, they recognised the deceased as their relatives,” read her statement.
Sori further alleged that a breastfeeding infant, whose father was killed in the field, was found three days later, 30kms away from her village.
“The security forces killed her father and handed her to someone, instructing him to search for the family,” Sori claimed.
Other human rights activists expressed concern over injuries to children.
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“The deaths and injuries of tribal children in this ongoing campaign by security forces in Bastar should alarm the nation. In May, two young boys died due to undetonated shells from aerial firing in Bogda village, not far from where this encounter took place. In Pedia village, two villagers were killed by police firing, and a young boy was injured. In Muntvendi village in June, a six-month-old infant was killed by a police bullet. Many teenage boys and girls have been jailed. No government should allow this,” said Rinchin, a human rights activist in Chhattisgarh.
Meanwhile, the inspector general (IG) of police said that the allegations made by activists and villagers were false and said that the children were used as human shields by the Maoists.
The IG said that the Maoist organisation had suffered serious setbacks, with senior state committee-level cadres like Joganna, Vinay, Kartik, Shankar Rao, and Sagar abandoned by their protection teams during recent encounters, leading to their deaths.
“Now, left with no other option, the Maoists have returned to their old and cruel tactic of using children and villagers as human shields to protect senior cadres. It appears that in this recent encounter, the Maoists used minor children as human shields to protect Odisha state committee-level cadre Kartik. We are gathering more information about the incident,” the IG said.
