Annie Zaidi: Let’s talk about justice

You will have heard about her by now. A nun (50, 52 or 53 years old, depending on which paper you read) was killed in Jharkhand.

Sister Valsa John, a nun who had been organising tribal villages to protest displacement due to coal mines, had begun to win small victories. She had successfully led agitations in Pakur district, and negotiated a good rehabilitation and compensation package for the villagers to be affected by the Panem coalmines. Some reports suggest that she wanted the displaced tribals to get a share in revenue. Others mention that she was the reason why Pachwara hadn’t suffered the same fate as Nandigram.

The sequence of events seems hazy at this point. About fifty armed men showed up in the village. Some reports say she was killed in her sleep. Others say that some old women tried to protect her by hiding her under mattresses, but all houses were searched and after Valsa was found, she was either shot dead, or hacked to death (depending on which newspaper you read).

She was in Bachuwari, Bachwari, or Pachuwara village (depending on which newspaper you read) for twelve years, living first with the headman’s family and then with another family, or perhaps she lived alone (depending on which paper you read). But there had been death threats, allegedly by the coal mafia. Some say that she was already being protected by some village residents. Clearly, she had needed more protection than she had.

The saddest part of this tragedy is that it was Sister Valsa who had been arrested when she demanded proper rehabilitation. In 2004, the police had filed a case against her for ‘blocking the road’ just at the time when a fire broke out in Pachwara. She had managed to get anticipatory bail in 2007. But she was arrested as soon as she left the court premises, and had to be let out on bail once again.

I heard the news of her killing on an e-group. An activist who had known her and worked alongside her in Jharkhand mentioned that the Kerelite nun had gone riding into town in the back of a truck to file a police report against the timber mafia. She had wanted to do more for the people she had sworn to serve. Teaching was no longer enough. She wanted justice.

A while back, I read of a megalith installed in Namkum, a tall slab that lists martyrs who have given their lives for their cause and their people. It starts from Tilkha Majhi who was executed by the British rulers in the eighteenth century, and includes names of those who fell in 1934 and 1985, when 16 people were killed after the police opened fire on people in Banjhi village. One of the victims had been a Member of Parliament. It’s been twenty-six years since. Who knows if justice was done?

Recently, Niyamat Ansari’s name was added to the megalith. Only a few months ago, the NREGS activist from Jharkhand was killed after exposing corruption by road construction contractors. Interestingly, Ansari too had been arrested before his murder. Certain police officials went on record saying that he was a man of ‘debatable’ character, for he was accused of ‘encroaching forestland’ where he was building houses and distributing them to the homeless.

I suppose one could talk about the character of a man who does such things. Or we could talk about the character of a police force that, despite ‘efforts’, has not caught all those who killed him. And we could talk about if and when Sister Valsa will get justice.

Annie Zaidi writes poetry, stories, essays, scripts (and in a dark, distant past, recipes she never actually tried)