Jharkhand: At noon on June 12, multiple news outlets reported an encounter between “Maoists” and Jharkhand police and security forces in the Kuku-Piri forest in western Jharkhand’s Latehar district.
“One Maoist was killed during an encounter with a joint team of 214 Battalion of CRPF [Central Reserve Police Force] and CoBRA in Kuku-Piri jungle under Garu police station in Latehar”, said highly placed sources in CRPF, The New Indian Express reported. It later posted an update from the police clarifying that an Adivasi youth was killed in a case of mistaken identity but claiming self-defence.
The next day, the identity of the deceased “Maoist” was reported to be Bramhadev Singh, out for a traditional hunting ritual with five other Piri forest-dwelling Adivasis of the Kherwar tribe, by several newspapers. All six men were cousins. A 24-year-old tempo driver, Bramhadev had been married for just over a year to Jiramani Devi and had a one-year-old son, Prince.
About a month later, another Jharkhand resident accused of being a Maoist, 84-year-old Father Stan Swamy, died in custody in a Mumbai hospital. A social scientist and Adivasi rights activist, the ailing Swamy had been incarcerated for seven months as an undertrial in the Bhima Koregaon-Elgar Parishad case, charged under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967. His death came four years after he had moved a public interest litigation in the Jharkhand High Court, praying for the release of thousands of undertrial prisoners in Jharkhand.
Protestors in Ranchi demanding an inquiry into the death of Father Stan Swamy, who was incarcerated under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and passed away in custody in Mumbai, on July 15. Photo credit: Riddhi Dastidar/ IndiaSpend.com
‘Encounter’ killings
The PIL was based on a 2015 study of 102 under trial prisoners accused of being Maoists, undertaken by a team of researchers and lawyers at Bagaicha, the social science institute founded by Stan Swamy at Namkum, Ranchi district, where he resided until his arrest in 2020.
The Bagaicha study said that those undertrials accused of extremism, who the Bagaicha team managed to contact and survey, were disproportionately from Adivasi (Scheduled Tribes) and Moolvasi (non-tribal natives from Other Backward Classes and Scheduled Castes) communities. Most were from poor households with limited education and did not know why they had been arrested.
Largely, they lacked the resources to fight their cases and remained incarcerated as under trials for years. They had been charged mainly under Section 17 (unlawful association) of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and under various India Penal Code sections, including conspiracy to riot with armed weapons (Sections 147, 148 and 149), and bearing illegal arms. Nationally, the pendency rate for UAPA cases is 94.6%, according to the National Crime Records Bureau’s Crime in India 2020 report, the latest year for which data are available.
A report by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs on the status of tribal communities in India in 2014 noted similar problems of “encounter” killings and the filing of false cases under “Naxal offence” in scheduled areas (Adivasi areas under the Fifth Schedule of India’s Constitution) as an “extremely disturbing feature”.
In this three-part series, we will examine the systemic injustices that Stan Swamy fought for over 30 years. This first report finds that the circumstances of the death of Bramhadev Singh and the arrest of the five survivors of the Piri incident, all of whom remain accused under the stringent Arms Act 1959 and sections of the Indian Penal Code, were similar to those of the undertrials in the Bagaicha study.
The case also bears similarities with the 2013 Edasmeta and 2012 Sarkeguda cases of encounter killings described in this tribal affairs ministry report. As poor agriculturalists with little education, the Piri survivors live in fear, and under charges, they are ill-equipped to fight.
Two differing accounts
In the alleged Piri village encounter, the first information report filed at the Garu police station does not mention Bramhadev’s death in police firing, claiming instead that a body was found at the edge of the forest. The FIR states the following in Hindi:
“On 12 June at 2.30 am, the forces were searching the forest. Around 8 am near Piri village tola (hamlet), they saw 10-12 armed people by the side of the stream and shouted across, identifying themselves as police and telling them to drop their weapons and surrender. Instead, the men began firing and the police retaliated, firing in self-defence. When the policemen ran towards the village, five were apprehended and arms surrendered while others were able to escape, with the Jharkhand Jaguars in pursuit. The five apprehended were 26-year-old Sukuldev, 27-year-old Raghunath Singh, 27-year-old Gobindar Singh, 50-year-old Rajeshwar Singh and 26-year-old Dinanath Singh.”
The FIR further claims that on searching the area, a corpse was discovered at the foot of the mountain whom the villagers identified as Bramhadev Singh, and a country-made weapon was found a little distance away. The five apprehended were unable to show arms licenses for the weapons found. The FIR charges all six, including the deceased Bramhadev Singh, under various IPC sections amounting to conspiracy to riot with armed weapons, attempt to murder and assault on a public servant, and the Arms Act.
All six men were cousins. The FIR cites two witnesses, Sohrai Kherwar and Bineshwar Singh, saying they signed independently and of their own free will.
The account of Dinanath Singh, one of the five accused, varies significantly from the claims in the FIR. He said it was a fake encounter. “We were out in a group for Nem Sarhul [a tribal festival]. We had hardly moved 50 metres to 100 metres from home when we saw the security forces across the stream. We began shouting “Sir, sir, hum log janta hai [Sir, we are ordinary people, (not Maoists)]”.
“Then the firing began. The first bullet hit me. We started running back to our homes and they kept firing. I fell down. Bramhadev was shot in the front and he fell down,” he told IndiaSpend in mid-July, his hand still bandaged a month after the incident.
“The annual tradition of Nem Sarhul has been going on through generations. On Nem, we hunt small birds and animals. So we carried our bhartuas [homemade single-fire guns] with us,” Gobinder told IndiaSpend. “We raised our hands. Bramhadev had his hands up when they shot him. We ran and took cover inside Rajeshwar Singh’s house after that out of fear.”
“They fired at the house,” he alleged. “It went on for at least half an hour. We saw the police pick Bramhadev up and take him to the other side of the stream, deeper into the forest, where we could not see anything from inside. We heard the sound of gunshots. They shot him again.”
“We tried to go to him but they did not let us,” Bramhadev’s mother, Manti Devi concurred, weeping. “They took Bramhadev to the other side of the river and shot him thrice.” My son was still alive, after the initial shooting, she said.
“The police threatened the other villagers going towards Bramhadev, saying they should go inside their homes unless they wanted to be killed,” Dinanath recalled. “Then they killed Bramhadev. For no reason. He was just a tempo driver who drove daily from Karwaai to Latehar to earn his day’s food.”
After this, the police demanded the five men come outside unless they wanted to be shot, the men alleged. “We even showed them Rajeshwar’s Aadhaar card, saying ‘look we are not those people [Maoists], look at our Aadhaar card’,” Dinanath recalled.
“As soon as we came out, they made us strip to our underwear, took us to the forest and questioned us naked in heavy rainfall, till around 6 pm” Then their clothes were returned and they were taken to Latehar police station, further away from their local station in Garu. Dinanath’s bullet wound was treated with stitches and medication at around 11 pm.
Back in Piri, the villagers insisted that until the five returned from the station, they would not cremate Bramhadev’s body. “Let them go, my son’s body is rotting,” Manti Devi recounted telling the police.
“They asked, ‘do you want the men or the weapons?’ and made us sign some papers whose contents we did not know,” the witnesses on the FIR, Bineshwar Singh and Sohrai Kherwar, who went to the station to have the five men released the next evening, told IndiaSpend.
Bineshwar Singh (back row, center-left), seated and Sohrai Kherwar (standing, right) at the Gram Sabha in Piri on July 19, said they were not aware of the contents of the papers they signed to have the five men released. They were cited as witnesses in the FIR against Raghunath, Dinanath, Rajeshwar, Sukuldev, Gobinder and the deceased Bramhadev Singh. Photo credit: Riddhi Dastidar/ IndiaSpend.com
‘Aren’t we human?’
Similarly, before release, the five men signed papers. “They hurried us, did not let any of us spend time on reading or signing, did not let us talk,” Raghunath alleged. The five learned of the case against them through local independent journalist Manoj Dutt Dev, who has been following the case.
“Are we not human?” Raghunath Singh alleged. “Then how can they do this? They murdered our brother and then they put the reverse case on us?”.
The FIR cites the lack of license for their traditional bhartuas as grounds for imposing the Arms Act and other charges, something that has never been demanded before in Jharkhand, which is an Adivasi state, according to Ranchi-based lawyer Sonal Tiwary.
The village then presented a collective memorandum to the Garu police station. A few days after the incident, the Garu police visited the village for an impromptu football distribution drive, the men told IndiaSpend.
On being asked about the charges, they said the papers had been processed to “higher levels”. “When they come to the village, they say nothing will happen to us,” said Raghunath and Gobindar. “So if nothing will happen, then why have you written our names? Tear it up, cross out our names, nullify the charges.”
Meanwhile, the five cousins’ lives remain disrupted. “We are poor farmers with wives and young children,” said Sukuldev. “Suddenly there is a case on us. We are very frightened. Who will look after our children?”
They want Bramhadev’s death to be acknowledged as murder and Jiramani provided compensation and a government job. He was the breadwinner. Now how will his son, wife and elderly parents survive, they asked.
Over 100 days after the incident, Jiramani Devi’s application to register an FIR on the alleged murder of her husband had not yet been registered at Garu station, Tiwary told IndiaSpend. Without this, no investigation, compensation or government job is possible. Jiramani would move the Civil Court in Latehar to file a complaint under section 156(3) of the Code of Criminal Procedure directing the Garu police station to register an FIR, Tiwary said in late September.
In 2020, only three cases of encounter killing were lodged against police personnel in the entire country, per the latest NCRB data. In 2019, a total of 10 cases were filed, countrywide.
The late Brahmdev Singh’s wife Jiramani Devi and their one-year-old, Prince, at the Piri Gram Sabha on July 19. Jiramani’s application for an FIR on the murder of her husband has not yet been registered at Garu police station. Without this, no investigation, compensation or government job is possible, lawyer Sonal Tiwary told IndiaSpend. Photo credit: Riddhi Dastidar/ IndiaSpend.com
2015 study
Jharkhand, a state with rich mineral reserves and a significant Adivasi population (26.2% against the Indian average of 8.6%), was carved out of Bihar in 2000 after decades of a movement for a “tribal state”. Adivasi areas under the Fifth Schedule of India’s Constitution are meant to have special autonomy. Fifteen of Jharkhand’s 24 districts are Fifth Schedule area districts.
“In reality, laws like the Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 and the Forest Rights Act, 2006 meant to safeguard rights of forest-dwellers are not implemented,” activist Dayamani Barla told IndiaSpend in July. “If you organise against forced land acquisition, they say it is obstructing government work and unlawful, and charge you with Section 353 [criminally deterring a public servant from doing their duty]. It happened to me.”
Of India’s most disadvantaged communities, Adivasis make up 8% of India’s population, but an estimated 40% of those dispossessed for dams, mines and industrial projects, IndiaSpend reported in December 2018.
Under the previous Bharatiya Janata Party government led by the state’s only non-Adivasi chief minister Raghubar Das, the state saw unrest over land acquisition and tribal autonomy. During the Pathalgadi movement, a protest in which stone monoliths were inscribed with the provisions of the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution, up to 10,000 people were charged with Section 124A IPC (sedition) in one district alone.
Among those arrested from across Jharkhand was Stan Swamy. In mid-2018, the Raghubar Das government filed an FIR against him and 19 other Adivasi activists for Facebook posts critical of the state government that allegedly instigated violence and played a prominent role in the Pathalgadi movement.
In January 2018, a few months prior to the FIR, the High Court of Jharkhand at Ranchi had taken cognisance of Swamy’s PIL, which sought to bring the issue of undertrial prisoners languishing in jails across the state to its notice. It had directed the state to file responses.
Swamy came to the issue of “mass jailing” of Adivasis for alleged support of Maoists, through his association with anti-displacement movements over his years in Jharkhand, according to his memoir, I am Not a Silent Spectator. This prompted the Bagaicha study of 102 undertrials, a study he drove.
In 2015, the Bagaicha team approached superintendents of various jails in Jharkhand for permission to interview undertrial prisoners, but were refused. They then sent a questionnaire under the Right to Information Act to all jail superintendents of the 26 central, district and sub jails (28 in 2019) in Jharkhand, the study’s methodology notes. Of the 26 superintendents, 12 responded after two months of receiving the questionnaire, most with incomplete information, the study said. Scroll. In
