Kameshwar Yadav

HardNewsMedia Report:

The widespread corruption in the flagship scheme of the UPA government, NREGA, is hidden from none. Social audits conducted by civil society groups and individuals have proved the existence of corrupt practices being followed by the district administration of various states. These social audits are threatening the people who have been brazenly siphoning off funds from public schemes for decades. Consequently, this public accountability in grassroots democracy is turning out to be dangerous for those directly involved in exposing irregularities in the scheme. That is, those who want the NREGA to be a success.
On May 15, a mutilated body (eyes gouged out and face smashed) was found near the Kanda forest in Palamu district of Jharkhand. The body was that of Lalit Mehta, secretary of Vikas Sahyog Kendra, an NGO that has been actively working on the right to food and NREGA schemes. He blew the whistle on widespread corruption in the scheme in Palamu.

Kameshwar Yadav

Lalit Mehta was last seen on May 14 with Jean Dreze, well known economist, former member of the National Advisory Council headed by Sonia Gandhi, and one of the architects of NREGA. He was seen in the small town of Daltoganj. He left in the evening for Chatarpur in Jharkhand. His dead body was later recovered by the adjoining Bishrampur Police Station.
Some people who live near the spot saw a man being beaten by a group. One man in Silda village went to check his well at night since he thought that the body might have been dumped there. No arrests have been made till date. Instead, the district administration has implicated Jean Dreze in its report. Activists claim that this is a brazen attempt to protect the criminals.
The report mentions that Robert, Lalit's brother-in-law, was aggressive and violent and always opposed his marriage with his sister. The report states that the other motive of the murder could have been the huge money transactions that took place at Vikas Sahyog Kendra. "This is totally baseless as it has been 10 years since Lalit has been married. So the Robert angle never arises. As far as money is concerned, Lalit has not paid his rent for months, his LIC policy has expired and his bank account has only Rs 800," says Jawahar Mehta, an activist who worked closely with the activist.
"The report shows that the police have made no serious enquiries into Lalit Mehta's murder. It does not provide any credible clue to this murder, but raises a number of mischievous conjectures using selective evidence. For instance, the report refers to interviews with Lalit Mehta's brother and his sons, without mentioning that the sons are one and three years old, respectively. Meanwhile, evidence from extensive interviews with Lalit's wife, Ashrita, is ignored. Further, the report is full of factual mistakes.
Even the date of the murder is incorrect: Lalit Mehta was murdered on May 14, not on May 15, as stated in the report," said Aruna Roy, Arundhati Roy, Prabhash Joshi, Harsh Mander, among other eminent activists, writers and journalists, in a statement.
Locals in Jharkhand complain of an entrenched nexus of politicians, contractors and district officials. They believe that Lalit was murdered so that no one would dare to enter these areas to conduct a social audit. Jean Dreze and Balram (NREGA advisor to the food commissioner appointed by the Supreme Court of India) in a joint statement said, "If this murder was an act to intimidation, it did not succeed. Friends and supporters from all over Jharkhand gathered at Vikas Sahyog Kendra and unanimously resolved to continue the campaign against corruption and exploitation in the area."
After facing pressure from various quarters, the state government, after more than a month of the murder, ordered a CBI probe. But the case has not yet reached the Public Grievances Cell which will take a call on it and then pass it on to the Central Vigilance Committee, which will then forward it to the CBI. Then, it's up to the CBI to take the case.
The high profile Arushi murder case was taken over by an ‘active CBI' in 24 hours after the UP government's request, but no one knows how much time the CBI would take in Jharkhand. The case has been transferred to the CBI, but the local CID is reportedly still interfering. Said NBA's Medha Patkar: "They must get to the bottom of the case. This is not only the responsibility of the Jharkhand government, but also that of the Centre. This is a central scheme."
However, in Jharkhand, the circle of murders continues. Kameshwar Yadav, a prominent NREGA activist of Khatauri village, Deori Block in Giridih district, was shot dead by unidentified gunmen in June 7. Yadav was a member of the CPI-ML (Liberation), an overground organisation working with the poor. He was involved in exposing the corrupt role of contractors and middlemen. He relentlessly highlighted irregularities in the NREGS and mobilised landless labourers and job-seekers for implementation of the scheme. The district administration has arrested two individuals, but the case has not been cracked.
The Congress-RJD backed coalition in Jharkhand seems rather non-committal, even while NREGA is the UPA's baby. Tek Lal Mahto, JMM MP in Giridh, told : "I am not aware of any of these murders as I am not involved in any of the NREGA work. I am aware of the high level corruption among senior government officials in my constituency. I have also raised this issue in Parliament."
In recent past, several such incidents have occurred in different parts of the country where social audits are being conducted. Members of these teams are warned, physically threatened, provoked and sometimes brutally beaten up. Recalling the violence in Jhalawar, Rajasthan, Aruna Roy, member of the Centre's Employment Guarantee Council, said, "When we went to do social audit in Jhalawar, we were chased away. Someone even tied a noose around the neck of one of the women. If a little force would have been used, she too would have died."
- See more at: http://www.hardnewsmedia.com/2008/07/2264#sthash.WSQ7KKuj.dpuf

Lalit Mehta

Wikipedia:

Lalit Mehta (1972–2008) was an Indian RTI activist, who was killed brutally near Palamau on May 14, 2008. He was a prominent member of The Right to Food Campaign, working in the Vikas Sahyog Kendra in Palamau District and was using his Right to information to expose scams in National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA).

The Jharkhand government looking into strong protests and public rally held in Ranchi later ordered a CBI probe into murder.

Lalit Mehta

After his murder, the naxals belonging Communist Party of India (Maoist) distributed a leaflet claiming that they know the killers of Lalit Mehta and they will be brought to justice saying that we will make the perpetrators of heinous crimes such as murder pay with their lives, which created a flutter among rank and file of police and government. Later in January 2009, Ranchi Police recovered body of one Raju Singh, who was prime accused in murder of Lalit Mehta, claiming that he was killed by naxals.
Lalit Mehta is survived by a wife and two sons.

National RTI Forum has honored his martyrdom by naming an award after him as Lalit Mehta RTI Gallantry award

Report:

Recently, two people were killed in isolated independent incidents, both very alarming and revealing of an underlying untruth.

Mr. Lalit Mehta, an activist of Vikas Sahyog Kendra, was trying to organise social audits to help the NREGA function better. We are deeply disturbed by the recent murder of Lalit Kumar Mehta, member of Vikas Sahyog Kendra (Palamau District), who was brutally killed on 14 May 2008 as he was returning from Daltonganj to Chhattarpur on a motorcycle.

The circumstances of this murder are disturbing. Lalit (aged 36), an active member of the right to food campaign and Gram Swaraj Abhiyan, has been working in this area for more than 15 years on issues related to the right to food and the right to work. He was a very gentle person and his work was widely appreciated. However he was also fearless in exposing corruption and exploitation, and often came in the way of vested interests.

At the time of this incident, Lalit was helping a team of volunteers from Delhi and elsewhere to conduct a social audit of NREGA works in Chainpur and Chhattarpur Blocks of Palamau District. Attempts had already been made to dissuade the team from conducting this investigation, particularly in Chainpur Block. Is it a coincidence that Lalit was murdered just one day after the investigation began?
If this murder was an act of intimidation, it did not succeed. Friends and supporters from all over Jharkhand gathered at Vikas Sahyog Kendra on 17 May. They unanimously resolved to continue the campaign against corruption and exploitation in this area. [link]
Mr. Kameshwar Yadav tried to use RTI to get the NREGA details, he was another activist who wanted to verify the system to help it work better.
Giridih, June 8: In a rerun of the Lalit Mehta murder case, Kameshwar Yadav, an NREGA activist, was killed by unidentified gunmen near Gaadi village about nine last night.

Kameshwar was returning to his Khatori residence — about 75km from here — after taking part in a CPI-ML bandh over the fuel price rise in block headquarters Deori.

Rajkumar Yadav, a CPI-ML state committee member, said being a morally upright person, Kameshwar had questioned — under the Right to Information Act — the nexus flourishing among officers, leaders, contractors and middlemen regarding minor irrigation work in Deori.

Kameshwar was also a block committee member of the party. CPI-ML leaders, including MLA Vinod Singh, blocked the Jamua-Koderma road for around six hours today demanding the arrest of criminals. Giridih SP Murari Lal Meena said that the killers would be arrested within June 13. [link]

NREGA is a wonderful scheme, it is aimed at guaranteeing the constitutional right to work to rural people by providing employment to one person from each household in rural areas. It is a flagship of the congress government and was flouted very proudly at the congress 4 year anniversary. But there are many skeletons in the closet. Mr. Mihir Shah writes about the discrepancies in implementation.

But even after the enactment of NREGA, things have been slow to change at the grass-roots. Displaying remarkable ingenuity, the old order is already finding ways to sidestep the radical provisions of the Act. Contractors deploy machines with impunity, even as forged muster rolls are filled up with fictitious names and thumb-marks of workers, to show as if the work was done by labour. This is especially the case in States like Jharkhand, which still do not have elected Gram Panchayats. [link]

Even Mr. Shourie in his article has raised some objections about how ‘right’ data is filled after initial data is pencilled in so that the performance of the flagship program of Congress remains grande.

After citing what the PM, FM, etc. have been saying about ensuring outcomes and not being lulled by outlays, Saxena asks, and ‘How is outcome delivered in the states?’, and answers, ‘By falsifying records!’ He cites the tour observations of a person in a position to know, and unlikely to state things that would embarrass the Government:

‘We discovered that all data of children at the centre for the past five months, weight, vaccinations, health records etc, were filled in with pencils. On probing further, I found it was done so that in case of an official inspection, the figures could be erased and “correct” data inserted to make the centre’s performance look good!’

The writer? The Congress MP, Sachin Pilot. Recalling such accounts, Saxena observes, ‘The practice is so widely prevalent in all the states, presumably with the connivance of senior officers, that the data reaching GOI [according to a recent study by the National Institute of Public Cooperation and Child Development] shows only 8% as the overall percentage of malnourished children in case of 0-3 years (with only one percent children severely malnourished), as against 46% reported by NFHS-3.

What is equally astonishing is the fact that records show a steep decline in the percentage of malnourished children from 29% to 8%, which is totally at variance with the findings of the various NFHS surveys. By sending bogus reports the field officials are thus able to escape from any sense of accountability for reducing malnutrition.’ [link]

Someone had felt constrained to exclaim at the state of affairs to describe it as ‘Loot for work program’, and after these killings, it is tending towards a ‘kill for work program’!

Lalit was killed on the 14th May, and the congress celebrated its four years on the 23rd May, touting NREGA as their proud achievement. Either the congress is cheeky enough to take us voters lightly or it is sure it wont return to power. Either way, we’ll show them.

Satish Shetty

Wikipedia:

Satish Shetty (July 21, 1970 – January 13, 2010), popularly known as "Satish", was an Indian social activist, noted for exposing many land scams in Maharashtra. He had used the Right to Information Act to expose irregularities in Government offices in the last five years. He was killed on 13 January 2010, by unknown attackers in Talegaon.

Recognition

He was given posthumously the Sajag Nagrik Award, which was received by his brother Sandeep at a function held in Pune
National RTI Forum has honored his martyrdom by naming an award after him as Satish Shetty RTI Gallantry award.
In 2011 he was posthumously awarded the NDTV Indian of the Year's LIC Unsung Hero of the Year Award with other RTI activists Amit Jethwa, Dattatreya Patil, Vishram Dodiya and Vitthal Gite

From Report:

CBI investigating IRB, closely linked to a company
Purti Sagar and Power Limited run by Nitin Gadkari

Mumbai: The CBI on Friday conducted searches at the offices of IRB Infrastructure Developers Limited, in connection with the January 2010 murder of RTI activist Satish Shetty. IRB was, in fact, in news recently over its links with BJP chief Nitin Gadkari.

"Searches are being conducted at four premises of IRB in Pune," a senior CBI official said on condition of anonymity without disclosing details. A year before he was killed, Shetty had lodged a complaint with Pune police's crime branch about an alleged land scam involving IRB chairman Virendra Mhaiskar.

CBI, which was handed over the probe by the Bombay High Court last year, had on October 24 conducted searches at 11 places in connection with the murder. Shetty was killed as he stepped out of his house on January 13, 2010, at Talegaon Dabhade town in Pune district.

In 2009, Shetty had written a letter to the Pune police seeking protection as he was allegedly being threatened by Mhaiskar. Shetty had alleged that IRB and its subsidiary companies with the connivance of bureaucrats prepared fake documents to claim ownership of government land.
The IRB group is said to have extended huge unsecured loans to Purti Sugar and Power Limited run by Gadkari. The company had bagged contracts from the Maharashtra government when Gadkari was Public Works Department minister in the state.


From report:

Even as several organisations across the country have demanded a CBI probe into the August 20 killing of anti-superstition activist Narendra Dabholkar, the Bombay High Court Friday questioned the central agency's honesty in carrying out investigations into the murder of Right to Information (RTI) activist Satish Shetty who was murdered in 2010.

On January 13, 2010, Shetty was murdered in Pune, after which the Bombay High Court initiated suo motu action in the case. Shetty's brother had sought a CBI probe.

The CBI, which took over the probe on July 9, 2010, had moved the High Court challenging the 'C' summary report filed by the local crime branch, Pune (Rural) in a complaint filed by the slain RTI activist against Aryan Infrastructure and Investment. The report was accepted by the Judicial Magistrate (First class) in Vadgaon on December 27, 2011.

On Friday, Justice M L Tahaliyani told the CBI that reopening the case lodged by Shetty would not help them as nothing prevents them from making an independent inquiry into it. "They (CBI) are just killing time and are not honest with the investigation," Justice Tahaliyani observed. He told the CBI that instead of focusing on reopening of the complaint lodged by Shetty, it is crucial that the agency finds eyewitnesses in the case.

The 'C' summary report said the complaint was filed by Shetty "under misunderstanding." Shetty had filed a complaint against the developer under various IPC sections, including cheating and forgery, and said three sale deeds were executed to sell MSRDC land in Pune to the developers that were cancelled before the registration of the complaint.

"Even after the C (summary) report, the case is not closed. You (CBI) are not prevented from taking a different view and filing a chargesheet in the case," the judge remarked.

On August 13, following the High Court's direction, prosecutor Swapnil Pednekar had submitted an affidavit of assistant police inspector Sunil Tonape saying that after perusing the entire material collected during investigation, police had concluded that no offence was disclosed in the the complaint lodged by Shetty on October 15, 2009. Shetty's complaint had led to 13 persons being booked, of whom two had been arrested and one had sought anticipatory bail.

On Friday, opposing the CBI's plea against the 'C' summary report, prosecutor Deepak More told the court that the local crime branch, Pune rural would produce their case diaries to support their case.

Adjourning the case till September 17, Justice Tahaliyani told the CBI, "Instead of opening a pandora's box and failing, it is better that they (CBI officers) do their job. You consider my suggestion seriously."

Narayan Sanyal

Copied from here

Narayan Sanyal is a senior politbureau member of CPI (Maoist) who was granted bail in all three cases against him. On 8th October, 2012 SP Hazaribagh accompanied by an Inspector arrived at Hazaribagh Central Jail to search his cell claiming they had information that he was in possession of a mobile phone inside the jail premises. Subsequently, they claimed to have discovered a mobile phone and used this excuse to keep him incarcerated. Narayan Sanyal was arrested in December 2005 by the Chattisgarh police but he was officially shown as having been arrested by Andhra Pradesh police. He was then implicated along with Binayak Sen and Piyush Guha in the notorious fabricated case. The manner in which police and prosecutor are deliberately preventing CPI(Maoist) leaders from being released on bail—by either re-arresting them under preventive detention as in Sushil Roy’s case in 2011, and/or foisting trumped up case as has been done against Narayan Sanyal—clearly makes a mockery of the government claim that we live under Rule of Law. Surely, if a person is granted bail, then it stands to reason that he/she should be released too. What the latest instance yet again reveals is how police and agencies work to subvert the criminal justice system and holds the judiciary in contempt. While CDRO is moving the NHRC against such blatant violation of judicial orders we urge all democratic minded people to note this new trend which is accelerating the process of lawlessness that has come to characterise the conduct of Indian police and agencies. Asish Gupta Kranti Chaitanya (Co-ordinators CDRO) 

Copied from here

[This news story has not been confirmed from other sources.  To our knowledge, there has not been any statement from the CPI(Maoist) regarding these developments and the role of the people included in this report.--ed.]

New Delhi, September 12, 2010

In a bid to get talks with Naxals going, the Centre has roped in arrested ideologues Kobad Ghandy and Narayan Sanyal, Swami Agnivesh has revealed to Hindustan Times.

He said the two were helping him to broker a “mutual cessation of hostilities or ceasefire leading to a final agreement”. Agnivesh has been acting as a go-between for the government and the Maoists.

“With the consent and facilitation of the central government, I recently met Ghandy and Sanyal in jail for around 90 minutes each to discuss how to arrive at an understanding between the Maoists and the government,” he told HT.

Sources confirmed to HT that the government had given its “consent” to Agnivesh to involve Ghandy and Sanyal in the talks process with the Maoists.

Kobad Ghandy

Ghandy (63), a London-educated chartered accountant and a politburo member of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), is in a high security solitary cell in Delhi’s Tihar Jail. He was arrested in February under the tough Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.


Narayan Sanyal

Sanyal (74) is in jail in Raipur (Chhattisgarh). He is an accused in 21 cases including the 2003 attempt on former Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu and has been in jail since January 2006.

“My meetings with Mr Ghandy and Mr Sanyal were very cordial and their response was very positive towards the peace and dialogue process,” Agnivesh said, adding Ghandy spoke of the need for confidence building measures, including protection of tribal rights and release of political prisoners.

Agnivesh, in fact, wants the government to “release Ghandy and Sanyal on parole to facilit-ate in-depth, face-to-face talk with Union Home Ministry officials who are designated to deal with the peace process.”

“I had recently even booked a space at the India International Center to organise a day-long talk among Ghandy, Sanyal, government officials and me, but the Home Ministry refused to release them on parole,” he said.


Swami Agnivesh
The Maoists, according to Agnivesh, have wanted him to involve “senior leaders” like Ghandy and Sanyal in the talks too.

“Cherukuri Rajkumar alias Azad—the CPI (Maoist)’s former top leader who it had authorised to conduct peace talks—who seems to have been killed in a fake encounter by the Andhra Pradesh Police in July had wanted talks with senior party leaders and then release of political prisoners,” said Agnivesh.

“In my last letter to him on June 26, I had informed him of my talks with Ghandy and Sanyal,” he added.

“But they (the government) killed the messenger.”

Cherukuri Rajkumar

‘Let Us Not Make Truth A Casualty In This War’: Cherukuri Rajkumar alias Azad

copied from original here

TRIBUTE
Cherukuri Rajkumar alias Azad, killed by the Andhra Pradesh Police, was a brilliant student of Regional Engineering College, Warangal, where he studied M.Tech in the late seventies. He led the Andhra Pradesh Radical Student Union after the Emergency. Subsequently he went underground and had been looking after political and organisational responsibilities for over 30 years. He was a member of the CPI (Maoist) Central Committee and Political Bureau and functioned as the party’s spokesperson.

Remembering the slain Maoist leader we reproduce here excerpts from the interview Azad gave to the Maoist Information Bulletin on October 19, 2009 and thereafter sent it to us for publication in Mainstream. It was carried in full in this journal’s Republic Day Special (January 30, 2010). —Editor



Q: Manmohan Singh and Chidambaram have been repeatedly appealing to the Maoists that they are prepared to sit down for talks if the Maoists lay down arms. How do you respond to this call?

Azad: I can say this is the most absurd proposal which only stupid minds can think of. It shows that these men are either completely ignorant of the historical and socio-economic factors that had given rise to the Maoist movement or are too intoxicated by the brute force that they possess by which they dream they can stamp out a movement rooted in the socio-economic causes. With such men at the political helm of India one can only foresee a terrible tragedy for the vast masses of the Indian people who reject this system and opt for a revolutionary alternative.

Manmohan and Chidambaram and all the brains in their think-tank should understand why a significant section of the people led by the Maoists have taken up arms in the first place. Can anyone who has a capacity to think imagine that Maoists have taken up arms only to lay them down without arriving at a solution to the issues confronting the Indian society? If Manmohan and Chidambaram think they are doing us a favour by offering the proposal for talks without touching upon the actual issues that serve as the basis for our armed struggle, they are only living in a fool’s paradise. It is not that these men who occupy the highest pedestals in the government do not know these things. They only want to pretend that they are for peace and that it is the Maoists who are intransigent and reluctant to sit down for talks. If these representatives of state terrorism really want to sit for talks then they have to fulfill several conditions all of which, of course, fall within the ambit of the very Constitution by which these gentlemen terrorists swear.

Q: What are those conditions?

Azad: I am just coming to the point. They should stop illegal abductions of Maoists and people suspected to be supporting Maoists. They should put an immediate halt to tortures and murders of unarmed people, instruct their so-called security forces to desist from raping women in Maoist-dominated areas, abandon their policy of destroying the property of the people and burning adivasi villages. They should withdraw the police and para-military camps from the school buildings, panchayat community buildings and from the interior areas so as to instill a sense of security among the people. They should disband the state-sponsored armed vigilante gangs like Salwa Judum, Sendra, Gram Suraksha Samiti, Nagarik Suraksha Samiti, Shanti Sena, and various types of Cobras and Tigers since all these blood-thirsty gangs are unconstitutionally established by the police top brass and the political leaders. An impartial judicial commission of enquiry should be formed to go into the inhuman atrocities by the police, CRPF, other Central forces and the vigilante gangs on Maoists and the people at large and basing on the investigations the culprits should be punished as per the law. All political prisoners that is, those arrested for being Maoists or on suspicion of aiding the Maoists, should be released unconditionally. 

They should repeal all draconian laws and Acts such as the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), Chhattisgarh Special Powers Act etc. They should disband the government-organised concentration camps in the name of rehabilitation of the adivasis displaced from their villages, pay adequate compensation to over one lakh adivasis who were forcibly displaced by the Salwa Judum gangs and the CRPF-police combine. Likewise, all those who have become victims of state and state-sponsored terror, that is, those who were murdered, maimed, raped and pushed into a state of mental trauma should receive adequate compensation. Through all these measures they should create a conducive democratic atmosphere in all these regions before placing their proposal for talks.
As for socio-economic issues, the lands of the tribals should be handed back to them wherever they are snatched whether in Salboni (West Bengal), Kathikund (Jharkhand), Lohandiguda, Pallamad, Bodhghat (all in Chhattisgarh), Niyamgiri (Orissa) and elsewhere. The mining and other so-called development projects that lead to displacement of the tribals and destruction of their way of life should be immediately disbanded. 

All the MOUs signed with the imperialist MNCs like Vedanta and the big business houses like the Tatas, Mittals, Essar, Jindal etc. should be scrapped. The lands snatched away from the tribals by unscrupulous landlords, other non-adivasis, and by the government should be restored to their rightful owners. These demands might sound utopian and revolutionary but there is nothing extraordinary in them. Most of these fall within the ambit of the Indian Constitution while others are needed for creating a conducive atmosphere for talks.
If these are fulfilled, then one can think of talks to discuss on the deeper issues that are Blocking the real development of our country.

Q: What you say will never be accepted by Manmohan and Chidambaram as it would mean betraying their own class interests. So don’t you feel that by laying down arms without such pre-conditions you can save your forces from the brutal offensive by the Centre?

Azad: We know that these diehard agents of the ruling classes whose real social base comprises of hardly five per cent of India’s population can never think in terms of the interests of the remaining 95 per cent of the population. They will not accept even these constitutional demands unless the people rise up and bring enormous pressure or rebellions break out in their own police and other armed forces...

Q: When you take into account the serious setbacks suffered by the armed national liberation movements recently in many parts of the world such as in Sri Lanka, how do you think you can confront the mighty Indian state and succeed?

Azad: Every war has its own particular, specific features. The war waged by the LTTE in Sri Lanka received a severe setback due to several mistakes which were explained vividly in a recent interview by our Party Secretary, Comrade Ganapathi. You cannot compare a people’s war waged under the leadership of the proletariat over a vast territory spread out over a few lakh square kilometres of area with a war waged by non-proletarian leadership in a small area roughly the size of a big district in India. Moreover, the people’s war we are waging is based on the Maoist principles of guerrilla war. Until the time we reach a decisive stage in our war, we will not fight a positional war in a small area against a superior force that is likely to resort to aerial bombardment if needed. We can fight the mightiest enemy by properly adhering to the principles of guerrilla warfare. We will hit the enemy when and where it is convenient to us, and not when and where he provokes us. His aerial surveys cannot locate the guerrillas who mix up with the people or are in constant mobility. His air sorties too would fall on the wrong targets, may be sometimes on his own men (smiles). It has happened several times in Iraq and Afghanistan. We will even change our battle fatigues and move in the dress of civilians. It will be impossible for the enemy to target us if we adhere to these methods. He will only end up killing civilians and help us in getting more recruits into our guerrilla army. That’s what the salwa judum had done. Thanks to Salwa Judum our guerrilla army has expanded rapidly...
Repression breeds resistance. And the more Chidambaram’s men go about terrorizing people, killing, torturing, raping and creating havoc in the adivasi areas, the more intense and extensive will be the armed resistance of the masses, and the stronger will our army become. This is the logic of historical development. Hence we will utilise the situation created by the enemy’s white terror to organise armed resistance on a far wider and extensive scale than ever before. As I said before, we live among the people and if the enemy destroys the entire population, we are willing to die with them rather than submit to the enemy.
It is the people who make history and not a George Bush or a Manmohan Singh or a Chidambaram. These vultures who prey on the corpses of millions of helpless people will be washed away by the unfolding tsunami of people’s revolts throughout the country.

Q: Then will you never be ready for talks with the government by laying down arms as a pre-condition?

Azad: Never, not even in our dreams we can think of such a step. We have taken up arms for the defence of people’s rights and for achieving their liberation from all types of exploitation and oppression. Laying down arms means a betrayal of the people’s interests.
We may lose some forces in this brutal offensive by the enemy. But you must keep in mind that when the people’s war began we had only a handful of committed cadre. Today it has grown into a mass Party with an All India character and we have a people’s army for the first time in the history of the revolutionary movement in India. Even if we lose some forces we shall rebuild the movement as we are now doing in Andhra Pradesh. You will see the results of our painstaking underground work in the near future...

Q: The government wants to establish its authority over the areas controlled by the Maoists. Chidambaram has been talking of a policy of clear-and-hold or wrest-control-develop or area domination in the major pockets of Maoist control. His argument is there can be no development without recapturing territory from the Maoists. How do you counter this policy?

Azad: Although we have influence over a wider area, our actual control is confined to a small area when compared to the vast geographical area of our country. And this area is witnessing real development... The exploiting classes have absolute control over more than 90 per cent of the country’s geographical area. If at all they wish to reach out to the masses with their so-called reforms, who is preventing them from doing so? Instead of addressing the burning problems of the poor in these vast regions under their absolute control they are talking of recapturing territory from the Maoists.
This policy of clear-and-hold as against the search-and-clear operations or sweeps is a carbon copy of the policy pursued by British imperialists in Malaya and the American imperialists in Vietnam during the 1950s and 1960s. This policy was described at length by Robert Thompson in his book “Defeating Communist Insurgency”. The dual purpose of the clear-and-hold policy is to kill the insurgents and destroy their infrastructure. The key element in restoring state authority and control is the programme of strategic hamlet. The enemy has realised that short-term raids into the guerrilla bases and zones, however large-scale they might be, will not fetch lasting results and the revolutionaries can regroup. Hence, there is an increasing emphasis on clear-and-hold operations with the creation of strategic hamlet as the key. The basic military strategy of the enemy is to deploy as many of his forces as possible in the same area of operation as that of the guerrillas. And the strategic hamlet is a pre-condition for restoring state authority as this ensures the physical and political isolation of the guerrillas from the population. So run the basic principles of this policy of Thompson now pursued by Chidambaram & Co. starting with Lalgarh...
The case of Vietnam is a classic illustration of the total failure of the clear-and-hold policy propounded by Thompson. Although 8000 strategic hamlets were established in just two years, the enemy could not protect them or insulate them from the influence of the Vietcong, and several of these were recaptured by the guerrillas or used for their operations against the enemy forces.
The most important thing to keep in mind is: Guerrilla warfare is precisely developed to hit and run, that is, to hit at the enemy where he is vulnerable, harass the enemy day in and day out, cut off his supplies, create instability and a sense of insecurity among the enemy forces, annihilate them bit by bit, and finally throw them out from the area. Hence if the enemy wants to set up police and army camps in the interior, he will not last long. He will be under constant attack and harassment from our PLGA and the people’s militia. How long can the enemy stay in these malaria-prone, water-scarce, inhospitable regions without any support or co-operation from the people? It will ultimately turn out to be a graveyard for these mercenary forces.
I can confidently say that within a short period, there will be demoralisation and desertion from these repressive forces. We have to wait to see how Chidambaram would deal with these desertions and what measures he would adopt to boost up the morale of his forces. Raman Singh and Vishwa Ranjan have been boosting up the morale of their forces by carrying out massacres of unarmed adivasis as in Singaram, Tongapal, Singanamadugu etc. and claiming that several Maoists were killed by their brave forces.
Chidambaram too has to travel along this beaten path thereby sending us more recruits. And the more areas his forces try to “recapture”, the deeper they will get bogged down in an unending civil war. The one lakh and odd forces that Chidambaram is currently deploying in the Maoist areas cannot control a fraction of the entire region. These forces which spread state terror—the CRPF, BSF, EFR, IRB, CISF, ITBP, NSG, COBRAs and various anti-Naxal special forces and elite commandos like the Greyhounds, STF, SOG, C-60, and so on—and their state-sponsored terrorist gangs like the Salwa Judum, Sendra, TPC, JPC, NSS, Shanti Sena, Tigers and Cobras under various names, will get more and more bogged down and sucked ever deeper into the quicksands of people’s war. Chidambaram’s fond dream can never be fulfilled even if he turns the so-called red corridor literally into a corridor of red with the blood of the adivasis and Maoist revolutionaries by enacting gory bloodbaths.
The reactionary rulers can neither wrest, control nor develop any of the regions but will get embroiled in a war of attrition causing thousands of deaths of innocent adivasis and losing their own forces in huge numbers. They can only destroy the villages through their policy of “kill all, burn all, destroy all” as pursued by their reactionary counterpart Chiang Kai-shek in pre-revolutionary China. The more destruction and havoc these mercenary forces cause the faster our people’s army will grow and our guerilla war will spread to wider regions in the country.
Thanks to Salwa Judum, our war had achieved in four years what it would have otherwise achieved in two decades. Now thanks to Chidambaram, our war will expand to wider areas, mobilise wider masses, and also will gather new momentum and get new dynamism. Every mercenary repressive force, by its very nature and sense of insecurity in rebel-held areas, will end up murdering people and destroying their property. This is what even the mightiest army is doing in Iraq and Afghanistan and getting rapidly alienated from the people.

Q: But the Home Minister says the government is duty-bound to establish the “rule of law”.

Azad: The “rule of law”, huh! Is the Home Minister serious about it? If so, why does he allow his police and the army to abduct people, illegally detain them for days without end, torture them in secret torture chambers in the most brutal manner, and murder them? Why did he permit the SIB of AP to abduct, torture and murder our Central Committee member, Comrade Patel Sudhakar? Why did he not ask his men to produce Comrade Kobad Ghandy in the court within 24 hours after his arrest and instead kept him in illegal detention for four days? Chidambaram revealed how big a liar he is by announcing that Kobad was arrested on the 20th of September and produced in the court within 24 hours. Just ten days ago, two of our comrades Ravi Sharma and Anuradha, were arrested from Jharkhand but the police vehemently denied even after the news was flashed in the media and the AP High Court called for an explanation from the police after a habeas corpus petition was filed. Only after they were completely exposed and all-round pressure was built up, the police produced them in the court on the 14th claiming they were arrested only the previous day. The list of such incidents is endless. As regards the atrocities on innocent people I had already described in some detail.
The so-called “rule of law” bandied about by Manmohan, Chidambaram, Raman Singh, Buddhadeb and others is only an empty phrase that exists on paper. In the eyes of the people it is merely an eyewash and, moreover, is an instrument used to oppress and suppress them. If the “rule of law” is really implemented, the entire corrupt and lawless bureaucracy, police, and the political class would be languishing in jails...

Q: Lastly, what is your Party’s call to the people at large?

Azad: 

We appeal to the people of our country to stand up boldly against this unjust cruel war on the poorest of the poor waged by the Central and State governments in the name of suppressing red terror. The only terror that is terrifying the people of our country is state terror, saffron terror, and the terror of the exploiters and oppressors. 

Violence is a structural feature of our society: it is an inbuilt, inherent characteristic of the existing unjust, authoritarian, hierarchical, oppressive and rotten society. Just think of it! A mere five per cent of the country’s population oppresses and suppresses the remaining 95 per cent through extremely brutal violence reminding us of unthinkable medieval brutalities. All tools for perpetrating violence are monopolised by the ruling classes and their representative state apparatus. The poorest sections of the society, who live a life of extreme misery and destitution, are forced into meek submission to the exploiters as they have no means to fight the violent repressive tools in the hands of the state. It is these hungry and angry masses who form the backbone of our revolution. Their violence is only defensive violence or counter-violence to the eternal state violence. Every peace-loving democratic citizen of this country should realise this truth and defend the revolutionary violence of the oppressed led by the CPI (Maoist).
We must all ask the question: who is spreading terror? Whose policies have led to the suicides of two lakh farmers in just one decade? Who has been spreading insecurity and pushing the vast majority to live under daily fear of hunger and starvation? Who is artificially hoarding essential commodities and terrorising the people? Who is snatching the lands from the adivasis, Dalits, poor and middle peasants and handing them over to a few rich business houses and MNCs? Who is indulging in the massacre of religious minorities with the aim of ethnic cleansing and creating terror among the 20 crore minority communities? Who is setting up vigilante gangs and unleashing a brutal reign of terror, butchering advasis, raping women, destroying property, and displacing over one lakh adivasis in just two districts of Dantewada and Bijapur? Who is abducting Maoists and supporters of revolution, cruelly torturing them and murdering them? Who is a terrorist? And who has given Sonia-Manmohan-Chidambaram clique the right to wage war on the Maoists?
It is time for every Indian to raise these crucial questions and declare boldly: “Stop this brutal war against the people! Not in my name, fascist Chidambaram!” It is the organised resistance of the people and people alone that can stop this brutal war waged by Delhi’s war-mongers—Sonia, Manmohan and Chidambaram—and the warlords in the States, for serving the class interests of their masters. This alone can ensure that the biggest traitors who publicly mortgage the interests of our beloved motherland to their imperialist masters—the Sonia-Manmohan-Chidambaram fascist clique—can never achieve their fond dreams of handing over huge chunks of our land to the imperialist marauders and their comprador agents in India.
Terrorism and “Left-wing extremism” are used by the reactionary ruling classes as a pretext to step up their fascist offensive on the people at large. This is necessary for the reactionary rulers in order to enforce their imperialist-dictated, anti-people, market fundamentalist, policies on a reluctant population.
We also call upon the policemen, who are sent to suppress their brothers and sisters for the benefit of a handful of exploiters and oppressors, to understand the conspiracies of the ruling classes, and appeal to them to desist from opening fire upon our own people. We have nothing against them so long as they cooperate with us and do not harm the people. We also call on them to join the revolutionary ranks or to help us through various means to defeat the cruel war being waged by a handful of hawks against the overwhelming majority of the Indian people.
Finally, we appeal to the media to verify the facts before propagating them and not to be carried away by the outright lies, deliberate distortions, baseless allegations, and the incessant mud-slinging by the police, bureaucrats, political leaders, and some so-called political analysts, who have unleashed a dirty psychological war against the Maoists and the revolutionary movement. The rulers have launched an all-out multi-pronged war and are engaged in a vicious propaganda campaign against us. You know that our Party has been banned and our members and supporters are constantly being hunted. Hence, we have hardly any scope to explain our standpoint to the people of our country and answer the unending baseless allegations against us. Let us not make truth a casualty during this war. We hope the media will provide some democratic space to the other version of the Maoist revolutionaries while leaving the ultimate judgement to the people themselves.

copied from here:
Comrade Azad was attracted to the revolutionary movement while he was studying in the Warangal Regional Engineering College in 1972. Azad who was exceptionally brilliant in his studies had played a dynamic role in the revolutionary movement too. He played a role in the formation of the Radical Students Union (RSU) in 1974. He was elected as the state president of RSU in 1978. He was one of the founders of the All India revolutionary student’s movement and guided it from its inception in 1985. He played a key role in conducting a seminar on Nationality Question in the then Madras city in 1981. Later he took up the responsibility of building the revolutionary movement in Karnataka and build up the Maoist party in this State for the first time. He attracted many comrades like Saketh Rajan into the party. When opportunistic elements tried to split the party in 1985 and in 1991, comrade Azad had played a crucial role in defending party line and keeping it united and strong enough in defeating their opportunist politics. He worked tirelessly for twenty years as a CC member and Politburo member from 1990 till now. We cannot separate Azad’s life from the history of revolutionary movement of the past forty years. Particularly, he played a key role in the ideological, political spheres, party education and running of periodicals. He fulfilled the responsibility of the party spokesperson since three years as ‘Azad’ in the most excellent and exemplary manner. He used his intellect and sharp pen outstandingly in fighting back the ‘War on People’ led by the Manmohan Singh-Sonia-Chidambaram gang. He stood as the powerful voice of the people against the rulers and exploiters. In the development of the party’s political line, in the development of the party, people’s army and mass organizations, in expanding the movement, in the emergence of new democratic power organs and in all the victories won, Azad’s ideological, political work and practice played a key role. Unflinching commitment in face of any odds and during the ebb and flow of the movement, great sacrificing nature, selflessness,simple living, indefatigable work for the revolution and for the interests of the people, astounding study, study of changing phenomena in the society from time to time, being with the people always are some of the great proletarian ideals established by Comrade Azad. Though he is no more, it is undeniable that he would serve as a revolutionary role model to every revolutionary and particularly to the youth, students and intellectuals.

Mahendra Karma

"No, No way he was not a crusader but lies among the oppressors and I think oppressors need this listing as well because crusaders and oppressors both are ideas, and only ideas are immortal not the humans, so listing mortals with their immortals ideas, and discriminating bad ideas with good and ideas those were bad and need societal condemnation ....  there you go boy, the first bad idea ...."

"Mahendra Karma of the Congress (I) is one of the major tribal leaders of the Salwa Judum. He is a known figure in the region, politically and otherwise. Originally from Pharasepal village, he belongs to the Kashyap clan. Pharasepal and its surrounding villages are known to have several landed households (their wealth measured by the fact that they sell 3-4 truckloads of rice), many of which are related to Karma. His father, Boodha Majhi, was a clan mukhia who also used to collect taxes for the raja.

Karma first began his political work with the All India Students Federation (AISF) while he was in the Law College at Jagdalpur. His active political career began around 1975. He went on to become a CPI MLA in 1978, but was denied a CPI ticket in 1981 on the grounds of his poor performance. He joined the Congress upon this, of which his brother was already a member. In the 1981 elections, which he contested as a Congress candidate, he lost the Dantewada seat to the CPI. Following turmoil in the Congress party, he joined the new party floated by Madhavrao Scindia, and was one of the two Members of Parliament elected on this ticket. In the eighties, he is seen to have established close relations with business interests in Dantewada and emerged as an opponent of the CPI-led Swayatta Andolan Following the formation of Chhattisgarh state,
Karma became a minister in Ajit Jogi’s cabinet. Karma is now the official ‘tribal leader’ of the Congress (I) in the state (till 2006)"

Malik Makbuja Scam:
Quoting from Tehelka Report (Story by Keya Acharya)

 "Nearly half a century ago, in 1955, Devinder Nath, an idealistic young ias officer, nervous at his first appointment as district collector (dc), found himself in a remote village called Bhanupratappur, in what is now Chhattisgarh’s Bastar district. The villages, inhabited predominantly by adivasis, were known for their magnificent teak and hardwood trees.
Earlier, local zamindars needing handy labour encouraged tribals to live inside forests but without access to its trees. After 1949, changed land laws allowed tribals right to forest lands, the latter on a government-fixed fee. Those holding tree rights thus became Malik Makbujas, currently an infamous phrase.
In Bhanupratappur, Nath found timber merchants duping Malik Makbuja tribals into bogus contracts surrendering their rights. In one case, a man gave up his trees in exchange for his young daughter and him to be taken to the cinema in town. In another, a tribal resisting a contractor was arrested by the local police for criminal intimidation. Nath described the robbing spree as the teak rush, “an exploitation, the likes of which, has rarely been seen anywhere in the country”.
With integrity and courage, there being no laws prohibiting these contracts, Nath curtailed the transportation of timber under the flimsy motor vehicle violation laws and got the chief minister’s unstinted support to see the mp Protection of Scheduled Tribes (Interest in Trees) Act, 1956, passed within six months.
The new law empowered only Malik Makbujas to seek permission from the collector to sell a fixed amount of their timber annually. These could be sold only through the forest department which fixed the rate, the idea being to give a fair price to the tribals. Nath, in his naivety and idealism, thought the collector as government administrator would ensure justice to the tribals. Fifty years later, a Bastar Commissioner, Narayan Singh, currently a member of the Chhattisgarh Land Revenue Board at Bilaspur, along with four additional collectors, all still serving, have been indicted in the country’s biggest environmental corruption case unearthed so far, now known as the Malik Makbuja scandal.
Tribals, tricked into thinking they were selling the trees, have through signed powers of attorney, lost their lands. They have been handed a pittance for their trees. The fraud has also involved redesigning government maps to show reserved forests as private lands.
Out of the Rs 12.14 crore that the forest department is recorded to have paid to the power of attorney holders for the timber (several cases have no records of money paid by the forest department), Malik Makbujas received approximately Rs 13.80 lakh."

excerpts - 

 "Soon after forming the anti-Maoist “armed civilian vigilante” movement, Salwa Judum (SJ) in 2005, Mr. Karma realised that there was big money in the anti-Maoist operations. A member of a business family of Bastar told this correspondent that they started financing Salwa Judum, sometime after its formation. “We wanted land prices to escalate, so we could sell it off. We felt if Maoists disappear and industries arrive, the prices will go up and SJ provided a solution,” he said. Eventually, Mr. Karma started getting state funding as well."

"Mr. Karma’s political career started waning as SJ collapsed. Finally, last Thursday, a Central Minister made it clear that ‘Bastar Tiger’ is no more the mascot of the party in Bastar. Perhaps the party realised that Mr. Karma had lost his base among his people after SJ. Out of this realisation his political masters announced his end on Thursday. His rivals, some of whom could well have been from his clan, killed him two days after."

Articles:

• A full PDF about Chhatisgarh in 2006 - Where the state makes a war on its own People
• The Hindu Article here
• The Hindu article here
• Livemint report here

Binayak Sen

Excerpts -

"Sen highlighted and publicised the Malik Makbuja system. It was a form of corruption by which tribals have for several years been scammed out of valuable timber on their land by colluding traders and politicians. He later lifted the lid off Salwa Judum (‘Purification Hunt’, in the local Gondi dialect), which has since 2005, through state sponsorship, destroyed villages in south Chhattisgarh and forcibly resettled tens of thousands into concentration camp-like horrors to deny Maoists shelter, recruits and network. Exceeding the energy of the Maoist rebels they accuse of brutality, police, paramilitary and Salwa Judum recruits have in concert freely killed unarmed men, women and children."

"As the state fought back with overkill, Sen suggested that the Salwa Judum could have been created to help business interests. He named the Tata, Essar and Jindal business houses, among others. The government, he suggested, hadn’t safeguarded the interests of tribal and forest dwellers before trading their futures for Rs 17,000 crore in memoranda signed with businesses from home and abroad to mine iron ore and diamonds, and to set up iron and steel and power plants."


"Four years ago, on a cold February morning outside a court in Raipur, a man with gentle eyes and a long grey beard had pressed his face through the iron grill of a jail van and spoken urgently as I stood outside on my toes, straining to hear him. Gun-toting commandos surrounded the van. It had not been easy to push past them to get face time. No one had really heard of Binayak Sen then. It was the first time someone from the national media had come listening. There were many things Sen could have pleaded through that window. He had already been in jail for nine months. He could have urged one to talk up his story in Delhi’s power circles, urged one to start a campaign for him. But, astonishingly, Sen’s urgencies had lain elsewhere.
“You have to go back and write about how we are creating two categories of human beings in this country,” he had said, as the commandos tried to nudge us out of range. “You have to write about the famine and malnutrition rampant everywhere. We are living out the Malthusian theory…”

Activist and a Doctor
Falsely accused by Govt. for sedition
life-term imprisonment
later released in April 2011

This did not sound like a man who was a dire national security threat. But Sen had been put in jail for “waging war against the nation” and it took another year and more for him to get bail from the Supreme Court. The freedom was shortlived. On 25 December 2010, a trial court convicted him and sentenced him to life imprisonment. Sen was re-arrested. Last week, the Chhattisgarh High Court refused to suspend the sentence and denied him bail again. He may not have waged war against the nation, it said, but he stood guilty of sedition: Why had he raised his voice against the State?"

"SOME STORIES need to be retold. Binayak Sen’s is one of them, for it asks uneasy questions about our society, governance, even ourselves. In his aptly titled The Curious Case of Binayak Sen, Dilip D’Souza looks at the farce that is the sedition case against Sen for his alleged interaction with Maoists. He presents facts that throw light on the rot that exists at the core of the system.

In the very first chapter, D’Souza unapologetically explains that he is not attempting a biography. He cleverly builds a context through which Sen must be viewed before he is pronounced a hero, offering details like why Sen chose medicine, the various speeches and presentations he made and what he believed in as a doctor.

Examining the sedition case, D’Souza puts forth plain facts — emails, chargesheets and witness accounts to illustrate the absurdity of the charge made against Sen. For instance, D’Souza successfully punctures the Indian Social Institute and Chhattisgarh Police’s claims that there was no medical equipment in Sen’s house. These details, though intriguing, will be familiar to those who have followed the case closely. But then the truth lies in the details.

For D’Souza, Sen is the reference point for what he identifies as the two major setbacks for civil society. First, he mourns the loss of the desire for nation-building that informed the worldview of independent India’s first generation. Second, he is critical of the apathy of the urban middle-class towards social issues. For instance, no young doctor has volunteered to shoulder Sen or his colleague Saibal Jana’s responsibilities at their Shahid Hospital in Dalli-Rajhara.

I remember meeting the Sen family two years ago in Raipur when Binayak was sentenced. The family was calm, except for Dipankar, Sen’s Belgium-based brother, who wanted to take his nieces and sister-in-law out of the country. Each time, Dipankar made an offer, Sen’s wife Ilina turned it down. His family’s resilience and grace under pressure reflected Binayak’s own.

The Supreme Court granted bail to him in 2011. Far from being disillusioned, Sen, the man labelled a Maoist, continues with his humanitarian work. D’Souza’s book pays tribute to a man undeterred by a government’s blatant bullying."

Tehelka Interview - here
Open Magazine - The SIN of Binayak Sen - here

Kopa Kunjam

The Grassroot Visionary

Kopa Kunjam
worked with Manish Kumar

A tribal activist from Dantewada, Chhattisgarh,Kopa Kunjam spent 22 months in jail for the murder of a sarpanch he tried to save. At the time of his arrest, Kopa had been implementing Supreme Court orders on the ground, helping rehabilitate villagers displaced by the Salwa Judum in Chhattisgarh. First an ordinary farmer, then a schoolteacher in a local village school, Kopa began social work after discovering the Vanvasi Chetna Ashram (VCA), an NGO in Dantewada.
As a VCA worker, Kopa travelled to remote v
illages wrecked by the conflict. He brought food and clothes, helped villagers rebuild their homes and taught them how to fight with local ration shops for their due ration. When Maoists tried to enter Lingagiri, a village razed by the Salwa Judum, he stopped them. When the Salwa Judum tried to re-enter the same village, he taught villagers how to unite in a human shield. Soon, Kopa became someone who could take on both the State and Maoists. He earned the trust of his own tribal community and took on a leadership role.
He helped show State complicity in the massacres of Matwada and Singaram where innocent villagers were killed by the Salwa Judum. He exposed scams in the implementation of the MGNREGA and the PDS. In December 2009, Maoists abducted two village leaders and killed one. Kopa happened to be travelling on the same road and was the first to inform the police. Months later, he was arrested as a Maoist accomplice for the same murder. Kopa was released on bail in October this year and continues to fight the case in court.

The youtube video by Manish Kumar here during Think 2011

Himanshu Kumar

Himanshu Kumar, a Gandhian from Meerut had spent 17 years working in Dantewada. He had an ashram on the outskirts of the forest where tribals from the deep interiors could come for refuge. Here they learnt how to file FIRs, petition the district collector, interact with forest officials, seek redress. But on 16 May 2009, as Indians elsewhere were celebrating a peaceful General Election — proud symbol of India’s vibrant democracy — a posse of policemen and several bulldozers rolled into Himanshu’s ashram and razed it to the ground. He sat with his wife and daughters under a tree and watched. His elder daughter cried as it rained. When the police were done, not a trace of the 17 years remained. Just a drooping crocus and, ironically, pamphlets in Gondi urging tribals to vote.
For several months more, Himanshu tried to continue his work from a makeshift ashram nearby. Then, as the intimidations piled up, one evening he shed his trademark white kurta, shaved his moustache, disguised himself in red shirt and jeans, scaled the wall of his house and came away to Delhi. He has never gone back.
Himanshu Kumar too could have closed his eyes the day the first raped and maimed tribal girl limped into his ashram. He knew filing hundreds of cases against the police would rouse the beast. He knew he was putting his family in jeopardy. But he chose
Himanshu Kumar’s Vanvasi Chetna Ashram, which works for tribal rights in Chhattisgarh, faced a suspension order in 2009 on the grounds of “threat to national security”. Himanshu says that he was asked to go to the District Collector’s office for the inspection of documents, whereas according to FCRA norms, the inspection is supposed to take place in the organisation’s office, whose licence is under consideration. A month-and-a-half later, he was asked to come to Delhi to submit the records in the ministry, but when that too failed to bring any relief, he sought legal recourse.
Himanshu — a man of irrepressible positivity and a humblingly ready smile — came to Dantewada in 1992. His father, Prakash Kumar had given up college in 1942 to join the Quit India movement; he met Gandhi in Sewagram in 1945. Later, he joined Vinobha Bhave’s Bhoomidan movement. “My father helped give away over 20 lakh acres of land in Uttar Pradesh,” says Himanshu, “but he and I do not possess one acre between us.” Inspired by his father and men like Vinobha Bhave, Himanshu started out under a tree inDantewada, asking tribals questions about their lives and needs, slowly helping them heal ailments like diarrhoea, snake bites, malaria and pneumonia. As their trust grew, the local gram sabha offered Himanshu a patch of land and built him a mud hut to live with them. For 13 years, there was no trouble as Himanshu and Veena — unusual daughter of a garment exporter in Raja Garden, Delhi, and a woman of equally inspiring positivity — went about their advocacy work. The trouble began in 2005, when the Chhattisgarh government started the Salwa Judum.
Himanshu began to protest against the excesses of the State, in particular the police andSalwa Judum vigilantes. He sent Sonia’s story to the National Women’s Commission: chairperson Girija Vyas did not think it worth investigating. Since then, Himanshu has sent hundreds of complaints to the Human Rights Commission. Their response? A committee led by the police to investigate police atrocities. Himanshu then also sent at least 1,000 complaints to the Superintendent of Police (SP) in Dantewada. He refused to file FIRs. (In fact, when Himanshu took up a recent false encounter case in Singaram, where 19 tribals were shot dead by the police, SP Rahul Sharma brazenly told the Bilaspur High Court that he had refused to file FIRs because Himanshu always lodged false complaints — forgetting that it is for the courts and not the police to decide whether a FIR is baseless or not.)
Himanshu’s advocacy brought him increasingly into hostile radar — erasing his past reputation for humanitarian work. In 2006, suddenly — 13 years after he began to work here — the state government sent him a notice declaring his ashram an illegal encroachment. Himanshu produced all the relevant papers. The issue went to court. In January this year, the government suddenly cancelled his FCRA and choked off his foreign grants. Himanshu had to let go of almost a hundred full-time workers. On May 16 — as the country was celebrating Indian democracy and the mandate for a stable government — Himanshu was suddenly handed a notice that his ashram was up for demolition the next day — illegally, since it was a Sunday. He called Chhattisgarh Chief Secretary P Joy Oomen and reminded him that the issue was still in court and that the next hearing was on June 17. Oomen assured him the ashram would not be demolished. The next morning the bulldozers moved in.

On 17 May, a day after the Lok Sabha election results, a police force of over 500 surrounded Himanshu’s Vanvasi Chetna Ashram, ten kilometers from Dantewada town. He was given half an hour to wrap up two decades of work. Then, the bulldozers moved in. They broke everything: home, dispensary, dormitories, training halls, kitchen, telephone towers (sanctioned by the government itself), swing, even a lone hand-pump that was the only source of clean water for the villages around. “Like skimming malaifrom milk”, says Veena, Himanshu’s wife.
As the bulldozers stamped the ashram out, it began to rain. Himanshu and Veena sat under a tree with their daughters — Alisha, 12, a student of Rishi Valley School, and Haripriya, a spunky 7-year old — and watched. Alisha began to cry. “I told her, if you do good work, you have to be ready for the tough times. I am glad they saw it happen. It was good training for my daughters,” says Himanshu. (It was good training for others too. The police caught two students from the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru who were visiting for field work and beat them. They yanked a journalism student, Veronica, by the hair and beat Javed Iqbal, a young freelance photographer from Mumbai, who had been travelling in the interiors, photographing the State’s assault on its villagers.)
On 17 May, a day after the Lok Sabha election results, a police force of over 500 surrounded Himanshu’s Vanvasi Chetna Ashram, ten kilometers from Dantewada town. He was given half an hour to wrap up two decades of work. Then, the bulldozers moved in. They broke everything: home, dispensary, dormitories, training halls, kitchen, telephone towers (sanctioned by the government itself), swing, even a lone hand-pump that was the only source of clean water for the villages around. “Like skimming malaifrom milk”, says Veena, Himanshu’s wife.
As the bulldozers stamped the ashram out, it began to rain. Himanshu and Veena sat under a tree with their daughters — Alisha, 12, a student of Rishi Valley School, and Haripriya, a spunky 7-year old — and watched. Alisha began to cry. “I told her, if you do good work, you have to be ready for the tough times. I am glad they saw it happen. It was good training for my daughters,” says Himanshu. (It was good training for others too. The police caught two students from the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru who were visiting for field work and beat them. They yanked a journalism student, Veronica, by the hair and beat Javed Iqbal, a young freelance photographer from Mumbai, who had been travelling in the interiors, photographing the State’s assault on its villagers.)

• Himanshu Kumar, Salwa Judum and Mahendra Karma - here
• Shoma Chaudhary Report here
• A letter by Himanshu Kumar here
• Tehelka Coverage here

- From Tehelka

Satyendra Dubey

Satyendra Dubey, whistleblower for NHAI
Project, martyred in Gaya on Nov27, 2003

Satyendra Dubey, whistleblower for NHAI
Project, martyred in Gaya on Nov27, 2003

While working at the NHAI, Dubey discovered that the contracted firm assigned to build sections of the roads, Larsen & Toubro, had been subcontracting the actual work to smaller groups, controlled by the local mafia. He found that these smaller contractors did not have the expertise to build quality roads. Later on, Dubey reportedly had the contractor rebuild six kilometers of roads at a loss to the mafia. Dubey wrote to his boss, NHAI Project Director SK Soni, about the corruption in the contracting firm, but he received no response and faced several threats following his actions at Koderma.


In August 2003, against his own will, he was transferred to Gaya. At Gaya, he experienced the same corruption found in Koderma. Frustrated with the lack of action, Dubey wrote directly to the Prime Minister, detailing the financial and contractual violations in the project. He had explicitly requested to have his identity kept secret, but despite this, the letter along with his personal information was forwarded to the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways. It is believed that the contracting firm may have had access to this letter.
On November 27, 2003, Dubey was returning from a wedding. He reached Gaya railway station at three in the morning and found that his car was not able to start. Dubey never made it home. He was found by his personal driver, shot dead in Gaya.


“A dream project of unparalleled importance to the Nation but in reality a great loot of public money... I will keep on addressing these issues in my official capacity in the limited domain within the powers delegated to me. ”
—Dubey's Letter to the Prime Minister

Wikibooks - here
Case Study - here
Reality Views - here

Shanmugh Manjunath

From Wiki -

Martyred while fighting against
adulterated petroleum distribution

While working for the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) in Lucknow, he had ordered two petrol pumps at Lakhimpur Kheri sealed for selling adulterated fuel for three months. When the pump started operating again a month later, Manjunath decided to conduct a surprise raid around 19 November 2005.
Having not heard from his son for three days, at around 9 that night, his father, M Shanmughan, had sent an SMS: "How are you?". There was no reply because that very night, during his inspection, Manjunath had been shot dead in Gola Gokarannath town of Lakhimpur Kheri. His body, riddled with at least six bullets, was found in the backseat of his own car, which was being driven by two employees of the petrol pump. Both were arrested and the main accused, pump-owner Pawan Kumar ('Monu') Mittal, was held on 23 November along with seven others. Indian Oil Corporation paid INR2.6 million (US$40,000) compensation to the family.

Resources:

• Youth Icons here
• Wikipedia Link
• Whistle Blowers India Article here
• Youtube link by AAP here
• Video by NDTV here
• More Articles here

Narendra Kumar Singh

IPS officer and AMU alumni
It may be an accident or may be a cold-blooded murder.

A Glimpse of the family - Report
FirstPost Report here
India TV News Report - here

Narendra Singh, IPS Office in Morena, MP was martyred
for the reason, he was trying to stop Illegal Mining in
March 2012

Sathees

A lesser known one but he did the courage - IBN Live Report

Martyred in TN, while blocking a lorry
illegally carrying sand from the river bed,
Mar11, 2012 Report

Shehla Masood

A CNN-IBN report says Shehla had sought details about the business activities of BJP Rajya Sabha MP Anil Dave and Narmada Samagraha, an NGO backed by Dave. 
Shehla had also alleged misutilisation of funds in RSS backed Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Trust.

Shehla was shot dead on 16th August morning when she had just entered her car outside her home in Bhopal. The assailants are still at large. Meanwhile, the police have questioned several people including some attached to BJP.

• The Hindu Report
• Wikipedia Link
• A Video Tribute Link here

Oppressed:

RTI activist, martyred in Bhopal on Aug 16, 2011
She was fighting against corruption, Death of Tigers
in MP sanctuaries, Narmada Samagraha

Amit Jethwa

environment activist Amit Jethwa had just stepped out of the Gujarat High Court when two men on a motorbike shot him point blank and sped off. Jethwa had been fighting for two years against illegal mines in the Gir Lion Sanctuary, owned by a politician, Dinu Solanki. Solanki’s nephew was later arrested as the prime accused in the murder.

• Wikipedia Link
• Amit Jethwa blog page
• NDTV coverage news on July 21, 2010
• Arrest of BJP MP Dinu Solanki news
• Down To Earth Coverage

Oppressor:

Solanki, BJP MP from Junagadh,
was questioned at the CBI headquarters (New Delhi)
for seven hours and later arrested
in connection with Jethwa's murder case

Oppressed:

Jethwa, a Right to Information (RTI) and environment activist,
was shot dead outside the Gujarat High Court July 20, 2010.
He had filed numerous RTI applications and a PIL
against illegal mining in the Gir forest region of Gujarat.