Ranchi: In the ongoing budget session of the Jharkhand Legislative Assembly, two MLAs Wednesday raised questions about alleged incidents of police repression, and the attitude of the administration under the Hemant Soren government.
ThePrint Hindi had carried a detailed report on 15 March about how cases of alleged police repression had increased during the Soren government, with Adivasis often being the victims.
After the publication of the report, the issue was raised in the state Assembly by the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Amar Kumar Bauri and Vinod Singh of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation, with demands that the state government constitute a commission of inquiry on custodial deaths.
Responding to ThePrint’s queries, Jharkhand police spokesperson Amol V. Homkar said some of these cases are under investigation, while initial probes are ongoing in others. He said, “CID investigation is going on in some of these. Appropriate further action will be taken post-investigation.. If anyone is found guilty, then justifiable and stern action will definitely be taken against them.
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‘Uncontrolled police, law and order has failed’
Speaking on the floor of the House, Bauri — MLA from Chandankiyari and a former state minister — alleged that nowadays, it’s said that incidents of police brutality against tribal people and Dalits have increased manifold under the aegis of the very government that was formed for their welfare.
Citing the report by ThePrint, he said, “A total of 33 people were subjected to police atrocities during the period from 2020 to 2022. Out of these, 10 people have died while 23 others were beaten up badly. Some of them have also been badly injured. Eight of these cases have happened in the year 2022. The victims of police excesses include 23 tribals and four Muslims. The rest are Dalits and people belonging to other communities.”
“Law and order has completely failed today because the police force has become uncontrolled,” he added.
During this speech, he also referred to the violence that has taken place in a village in Bengal’s Birbhum district, where eight people were burned to death Monday night, and asked, ‘Is the Jharkhand government also trying to do something similar here?”
Bauri also questioned the attitude of the state government on many other matters, including mob lynching and rape.
Responding to this, Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) leader and Giridih MLA Sudivya Kumar Sonu said in the House, “Amar Bauri was referring to a report published in ThePrint that has mentioned various unfortunate, tragic incidents that have happened in Jharkhand. He has randomly picked up only one news item in ThePrint, I can show a hundred more reports of ThePrint in which the severe degradation of law and order during the BJP regime have been mentioned.”
Demands to constitute an inquiry commission
Vinod Singh, the CPI-ML MLA from Bagodar, also asked pointed questions of the government while citing ThePrint’s report, and said, “Incidentally, at the moment, there is a government in the state that has suffered most due to repression and persecution, with a lot of people having been martyred; so there is lot more hope from this party (Jharkhand Mukti Morcha).”
“Compensation has been provided in many of these incidents, but it will not be sufficient — strict action must be taken against the culprits. However, so far, no action has been taken on any of these incidents that have taken place under this government,’ he said.
He added, ‘We have all seen that in the past years, a Holi full of blood has been witnessed across the state.”
Singh further said that from 2019 till now, 156 people have died in the state while under judicial custody.
“These cases will have to be studied in detail. Only then can future occurrences be stopped. Instead of investigating a single case, all such cases should be investigated by a single commission. Action should then be taken on the basis of the report that comes out of it,” he said.
Singh also remarked that during the course of the discussion, the government had asserted that the number of such cases during its tenure was lower than the corresponding figures under previous governments. However, a reduction in numbers doesn’t mean much, said Singh — what matters is that such incidents are taken seriously.
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