Sukma/Dantewada/Jagdalpur: Driving towards his Burkapal village after spending five years, two months and seven days in prison, 43-year-old Sodi Nanda knew exactly what he wanted to do. He had been acquitted by a special NIA court a week ago, in the 2017 Sukma Maoist attack in which 25 CRPF personnel were killed in an ambush. Nanda, having grown suffocatingly tired of the concrete walls of his cell, was a free man now.
As soon as he reached his village in Chhattisgarh’s Sukma district, Nanda walked towards the forest — and kept walking until he found the orange-coloured tangy fruit, Kosam.
“I used to dream about walking into the jungle, plucking the fruit and squeezing it in my mouth.” Nanda said when we visited Burkapal to meet the 37 tribal men acquitted of all charges.
These men, many of them the sole breadwinner of their household, have been picking up their lives since coming out of Jagdalpur Central Jail on 17 July, two days after 121 tribals accused of involvement in the 2017 attack were acquitted.
Twenty-seven-year-old Hemla Joga is bonding with his daughter Sunita, who was in her mother’s womb when he was arrested five years ago.
His elder brother Madkam Singa, similarly arrested and acquitted, has been inspecting the village since his return. “I see some huts are gone. Some trees have grown. When I got off the bus, I asked — ‘is this my village?’” Singa said.
Sodi Kesa, 37, always complained about the watery dal whenever his wife visited him in jail. When he returned home last week, he was welcomed with a desi murga feast.
A young Madkam Bhima came home to find that his wife had married another man and moved to Andhra Pradesh. “She even took my Aadhaar card and passbook,” Bhima said as elderly men around him patted his back with assurances of finding him a wife soon.
Everyone in Burkapal village, the site of the 2017 Maoist attack, has a story to tell — of huts washed away in rain, sons dropping out of school to feed families, wives selling their cattle to send money to husbands languishing in jail, parents passing away without bidding goodbye to their sons, and infants being ferried to jails to familiarise them with their fathers.
Theirs is a collective memory, of years lost — and of being ‘framed’ by the Chhattisgarh Police in a terror attack that they say they had nothing to do with.
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Wait, trial, acquittal
On 24 April 2017, a battalion of 70 CRPF personnel guarding the construction of a bridge on Dornapal-Jagargunda road were ambushed and gunned down by a group of about 250 Maoists barely 100 metres from the Burkapal village. The attack killed 25 personnel and injured seven others. A total of 125 tribals, including a woman and three minors, were arrested from 28 villages of three districts in two states (Bijapur and Sukma in Chhattisgarh and Bhupalpally in Telangana).
Besides several IPC sections, the Chhattisgarh Police booked the tribals under the Arms Act, Explosive Substances Act, and later added charges under the UAPA (Unlawful Activities Prevention Act) and the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act.
For four years, the case remained at the Jagdalpur NIA court without going to trail. And UAPA meant the tribals could not get bail.
“In these four years, more than 10 lawyers represented the accused but the trial did not start,” lawyer Bhima Podyami, an associate of Sukma-based lawyer Bicham Pondi, said. On the day we met Bhima at the Dantewada court, nine tribals were acquitted in a different terror case.
“There is a pattern here — shady investigation, revengeful arrests and cover-up by the police,” he said.
As soon as Bicham and Bhima joined the case, things began to move. The case reached the court in May 2021, charges were pressed in June and witnesses had been summoned by the first week of July. The accused tribals were presented before the court in groups of 10 to 15 and hearings would take place on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday every week.
About a year later, on 15 July 2022, 121 tribals were freed. While one undertrial, Dodi Manglu, died in jail on 2 October 2021, the remaining three — all juveniles — are out on bail. “The prosecution has failed to establish that the accused were active members of Naxal groups or were involved with the crime. The prosecution could not prove that weapons or bombs were seized from the accused by the police,” special judge Deepak Kumar Deshlhre said.
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‘Framed’; IG says ‘not innocent’
“I am not a naxalite.” Lying in a cot at a distance, Muchaki Mooka, 40, shouts from the top of his lungs.
Mooka was arrested in 2018, for a bomb blast which grievously injured his wife. In jail, according to their youngest son Muchaki Nanda, “he was framed in the 2017 case too”.
“We fight two battles every day. One with Naxals and another with the armed forces,” Muchaki said. “Both believe us to be the supporters of the opposite parties. Five years ago, when the Naxals attacked the CRPF, we were miles away from the village. We gathered in the forest to celebrate our local festival Beej Pnadum (tree deity),” Nanda said.
In the 2010 case, 10 tribals spent around three years in jail before a fast track court acquitted them in 2013. Bicham Pondi was the defence lawyer then as well.
“Men had fled to Andhra fearing State violence after the attack. Only women, children and older people had stayed behind. Police started sending messages that they will offer jobs and will not make arrests and the tribals should return,” Sodi Kesa says with disappointment. He was one of the men who returned only to be stuffed by the police in a bus and taken away. Some never came back, just news of their death in mysterious circumstances.
The acquittal may have ended the trial for the accused villagers, for Inspector General of Police, Bastar range, Sundarraj Pattilingam, “the case is not closed yet”. “We are still investigating the case under Section 173(8) of the CrPC against 139 absconding Naxals,” he added.
The IG, while emphasising that the police respects the court order, said they do not consider the villagers to be innocent.
“They work as militia cadres for naxals. Either under pressure or compulsion or fear, they become the support network of Naxals. They provide shelter to them, work as watch parties, cook food for them, help them cut trees to block nearby camps while they carry out deadly attacks on the security forces,” the officer alleged.
Villagers refute the allegation. “We did not run away because we had something to do with the attack. We ran away out of panic. We wanted to escape State violence,” said Kesa Nanda, who was arrested along with his son. “We are villagers. We were also shocked when we heard of the attack.”
Madkam Bhima echoed the same. “For no reason, they kept us in jail for five years.”
Sodi Kesa said he had been living in Andhra Pradesh for a long time but had to return in 2016 when his father passed away. “Within a year, I was booked for conspiring against the security forces. All I do is agricultural work,” he said.
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Back home, the taste of freedom
On the evening of 17 July, the tribals who had started from Jagdalpur Central Jail in the afternoon reached Burkapal and got down at the same government school ground from where they were picked five years ago.
They are ready to put everything behind now. “We will build cordial relations with the Saaheb at the security camps. Our fields are nearby,” the tribals said in unison.
Their families had been waiting for their return. When they arrived, women washed their feet with fresh water. Next day, a party was thrown for their freedom.
But the real taste of freedom came when they were served local mahua, mutton and pork.
(Edited by Prashant)