Clock struck 11, cops shot them

On the night of June 28, fear gripped Sarkeguda, Kottaguda and Rajpeta of Chhattisgarh again. Seven years after these villages were burnt to the ground, 17 people, including a girl, 12, and two boys, 16, were shot dead by the CRPF and local police. The police claimed that they shot at what they believed to be a Maoist gathering, and killed two active Maoists.

On July 4, the doctors in charge of treating the injured policemen at a Raipur hospital gave a statement after days of stonewalling the press that the policemen were injured by pellets which Maoists are known to use. On July 3, a fact-finding team consisting of JP Rao, activist and retired sociology professor at Hyderabad’s Osmania University, Nandini Sundar, activist and sociology professor at Delhi University, and Kopa Kunjam, tribal leader and activist, arrived at the spot of the killings. DNA found out that the villagers’ account of what transpired bore no resemblance to what the police had claimed.

The killing fields
Sarkeguda, Kottaguda and Rajpeta are small settlements of 70 houses altogether. The villages are a stone’s throw from each other and the clearing is common ground. The villagers say, on June 28, they had gathered there in the evening to discuss farming issues and plan for Bija Pandum, their annual harvest festival.

“We started around 8pm, but it was nearly 11pm by the time everyone got there,” said Madkam Rama, 50, whose father set up Rajpeta. “Just when the meeting was in full swing, we suddenly heard gunfire from all directions. Some people put their hands up, and shouted that they were not Naxalites. Others started running in panic. We didn’t know what was going on, the bullets were coming from all directions.”

That night, 16 people were killed. Villagers claim those who didn’t die of gunshot wounds were hacked to death with axes that the police picked up from the village itself.

The shooting, villagers say, lasted for an hour. Later, the police stopped shooting but didn’t leave the area. In the morning, Irpa Ramesh, 27, came out of the house to survey the situation. The police shot him. He managed to crawl back into his house, but the police followed and pounded him to death with a brick, villagers say.

Ramesh’s brother Dinesh, 22, a father of four, was also killed in the incident. On June 30, when the police brought back all the bodies from the station to the village to burn, Dinesh’s wasn’t brought back. He was branded a Maoist and burnt at the station itself. His elder sister Sasikala Nag says, “Dinesh was a good-natured boy. He didn’t fight with anyone. And he wasn’t a Maoist.”

Sundar says, “If it was a Maoist meeting, there would’ve been sentries posted all around. The villagers wouldn’t have been caught by surprise.” Sundar and Rao have recorded the villagers’ statements and plan to file a case in the high court on their behalf.