Villagers recount the horror of being caught in the crossfire between the police and Maoists
The ‘bomb’ fell in front of the school on Friday morning. The students had just finished their lunch in the government-run residential school for tribal children at Sawargaon, a village 250km from Nagpur, where Maharashtra meets Chhattisgarh.
“For a few minutes,” said Pardesi Naitam, still sounding anxious, “we could not see each other. A cloud of dust and smoke had enveloped the entire area and all of us lay frozen in shock and fear.”
Trouble had begun an hour earlier when the Sawargaon hamlet villagers said gunfight broke out about 500 metres away, triggered after Maoist landmine killed three jawans of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP).
But no one in Sawargaon hamlet, housing some 110 huts, expected to be caught in the crossfire. A misdirected explosive, perhaps a 2-inch crude mortar, hit the electricity wire running over the school premises, and landed in the hamlet near the school.
The explosion was deafening.
When the cloud of smoke subsided, Naitam said he could only see blood splattered all over. Then he saw the bodies.
Two students, aged 11 and 6, Manguram, 55, and a middle-aged lady cook, DJ Gawade, died on the spot. Another student, 6, Mukesh Potavi succumbed to his injuries while being shifted to Nagpur late on Friday night.
Two students remain seriously injured and are at the Gadchiroli general hospital, while six are recuperating at the Murumgaon rural hospital.
The blue-coloured mud walls of the thatched huts bear splinter-injuries all over, a good inch or more deep. “The splinters ripped the students who were in the verandah,” school official Vasant Atram said.
A day after the incident, the mood is sombre. “Instead of celebrating Durga puja, we are mourning,” lamented a tribal. No one is sure whom to blame — the security forces or the Maoists!
The bodies of Manguram and Nangsay Hidko lay on the road. The villagers said Manguram was unlucky: he was just stepping out of the hut when the explosion occurred, killing him instantly.
Nangsay Hidko, 5, from a neighbouring village, died on the floored verandah, her body wracked by splinters. The cook was washing the utensils, her stomach was split open.
“It was a bizarre,” said Raghunath Narote, who witnessed the tragedy. “We all rushed out after we heard the explosion. The children were covered in blood.”
Twenty-four hours later, government representatives are yet to reach the village to provide help to the hapless villagers. In the decades-old Maoist insurgency in Gadchiroli, this is the first time that the children of an ashram school are among the victims.
The fearful students, 240 of them, left for their respective homes on Saturday, Vasant Atram said. “They will come back in a few days,” he said.
For the impoverished tribal parents, the school is the most important institution for a better future. Still mourning the loss of their elder son, six-year-old Mukesh, Parshuram and Ramabai Potavi said they would certainly send their second child to the school.
“We are illiterates,” said Mansaram Atla, a farmer from Fulbatti village, whose 11-year-old daughter Sukmati is among the injured students recuperating at Murumgaon hospital. “I want my children to study,” he said. “Who do I blame for this incident? What voice do I have?”
Asked if she would go back to school, Sukmati replied: “I will.”
“I will too,” added Santosh Uikey, lying on the adjoining bed, with a splinter injury to his left thigh.
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