Price of saving a life: 21 months in jail

‘It is correct that... Kopa Kunjam tried to save me from the Naxalites,’ said Jhadi Nagesh in the sessions court of Bijapur, Bastar.

Maoists kidnapped two men on June 2, 2009. One, Punem Hoonga, was killed the other, Jhadi Nagesh, was released. On December 10, Kunjam was arrested for the murder of Hoonga, who the Maoists killed. Nagesh, the man who was released unharmed by the Maoists, testified in court that Kopa tried to save him.

So why was man who tried to save their lives from Maoists arrested for murder on December 10, 2009? Why was he arrested when the first information report regarding the incident never mentioned him as an accused? Why was he arrested when every villager in the Basaguda area attests that he is innocent and that he spent sleepless nights ensuring that those kidnapped were released unharmed?

The high court rejected Kunjam’s bail even when one of the prime witnesses, Nagesh, claimed he tried to save his life. Why?
Kunjam’s story cannot be told without the story of the villages of Samsetti, Singaram, Matwada, Gompad, Gacchanpalli, and the Basaguda block area, and the work he did with Gandhian NGO Vanvasi Chetna Ashram. 

Kunjam took four adivasi women of Samsetti, who were gang-raped by special police officers, to court and they had even managed to procure warrants for the arrests of the accused.

When 19 adivasis were killed in Singaram, the first affidavits and testimonies contradicting the state version were collected by Kunjam and his associate Lingoo, who also helped the victims to approach the high court.

In the Matwada Salwa Judum camp, the police killed three men. Their faces were smashed in by rocks by drunk policemen. Kopa motivated the wives of the deceased to fight for justice, and for once, managed to procure a high court order, asking for compensation for them, which itself is an anomaly for victims of state violence.

With the onset of Operation Green Hunt, the villages of Gompad and Gacchanpalli were attacked and children and elders were killed by the Cobra forces. Kunjam was part of the initial fact-finding team that helped to ascertain what really happened — children were killed, as were grandfathers and grandmothers, while the police kept giving press conferences about killing ‘armed cadre’ in ‘fierce encounters.’

Then there is Basaguda Block, also the scene of Hoonga’s murder. Basaguda block was empty by the beginning of 2009. All the villages of the area were deserted after the Salwa Judum burnt them down, or the Maoists killed, and the SPOs would beat the same victims of Maoist violence, for not moving into the camps.

A majority of the residents who were landowners had migrated to Andhra Pradesh where they lived as landless labour.
In the summer of 2009, in accordance with the Supreme Court’s orders ensuring that people were allowed to return to their homes, Kunjam was an integral part of ensuring that there were no untoward incidents of violence by either the Salwa Judum or the Maoists, and that people were allowed to resettle in their homes and rebuild their lives.

For instance, when Maoists first saw the people returning to their homes, they dug up a road. But these were not hardcore Maoists, they were villagers first, and they felt they had to protect their homes from being burnt down again as it had happened in 2006 when the Salwa Judum held a mass rally in their area.

Kopa knew that. And he had his way of adding humour to tell you the truth. For instance, how the Maoists had given some of the adivasis of the ‘interiors’, ‘pressure bombs’ or landmines to strategically plant to stop the police movement, but the adivasis put them to better use by hunting wild pigs with them.

But while the settlements began to thrive, Kopa failed to completely stop the violence. The Maoists weren’t reasonable. Hoonga, who was closely linked to the Salwa Judum was executed, as was an SPO Suresh a few weeks earlier.

A few months later, the Superintendent of Police, along with Lingoo, once Kunjam’s associate of Vanvasi Chetna Ashram, had asked him to leave the organisation, and human rights work, and work for the police. He said no and he was arrested, beaten and tortured the next day. And has been in jail ever since.

He once asked me, ‘What good did all the fact-finding do? How many complaints did we lodge? How many times did we go to court? Did anything ever change in the civil war?’

The SC judgement banning the arming of Salwa Judum didn’t stop SPO Kursam Asant Kumar from having his gun with him when he was killed in a gun battle on August 19, in Bijapur. The war continues. Kopa, like the adivasis of Bastar, stays in a jail called industrial development.

— The writer is a journalist