Are these India’s criminals?

There’s a man. His name is Bhagwati Sahu. He was a ‘Janpad’ member, a kind of elected representative for the local population in Rawaan, where a cement factory had been set up. This was the Ambuja-Holcim plant, in Raipur district.

Bhagwati Sahu was a trade union activist, affiliated to the Pragatisheel Cement Shramik Sangh. He helped contract workers get minimum wages. That he supported peasants who were protesting against the company’s encroachments on village commons. He talked about compensation, violations of the state’s Rehabilitation Policy, the excessive use of water by the company.
This man has been in jail since May 18, 2011. After an altercation between security officers hired by Ambuja-Holcim and the villagers, two cases of assault and loot were filed against him.

The Gram Sabha of village Rawaan has said — in writing — that Bhagwati was not present at the spot, but the cases were not withdrawn.

The police say Bhagwati has criminal antecedents, and listed 18 cases where he is named as an offender. These turned out to be five cases listed over and over again, most of which are relevant to his activism work.

The Chhattisgarh High Court has refused him bail. The Supreme Court declined to interfere. Bhagwati remains in jail. I don’t know what’s happening to the village commons.
***
There was a man. His name was Jhipru Mukane. He lived only a couple of hours drive out of Mumbai. Last year, this man had borrowed Rs 6,000 from a brick-kiln owner, someone reportedly called Choudhari. The loan was repaid (according to Jayabai, Jhipru’s wife) or not repaid (according to Choudhari).

So Choudhari dragged off Jhipru, put him in chains, made him work at the kiln and, I suppose, tortured him in their spare time.
Jayabai went looking for him. She found him chained and locked up. So she went to Vasind police station. The police told her to file a written complaint. She didn’t know how to write. So a woman whose husband was being tortured for Rs6,000 had to go looking for Rs50 to hire a ‘writer’. She alleges that the police still wouldn’t take the complaint. That was November 12. She waited for the police to act on their promise — that her husband would come back home soon. She waited ten days. Then she went to the brick kiln. She went with food.

She saw that the Choudharis were beating Jhipru. They threatened to throw her into a boiling vat if she didn’t go away. Later that night, the cops finally showed up. With news that her husband was dead. And had already been cremated.
***
Remember Soni Sori? Yes, that school teacher who was arrested for being a Maoist. Yes, the one who didn’t trust the Chhattisgarh police, and ran all the way from the bloodied forests of her home to the national capital, seeking protection, saying she feared for her life. She was probably hoping that there would be some sanity, some semblance of justice in Delhi. If not in Delhi, then where? But the judiciary had handed her over to the Chhattisgarh police almost immediately. Remember how she had ‘slipped in the bathroom’ almost immediately after the Chhattisgarh police got their hands on her? Remember how she was in no condition to even walk into the courthouse in Raipur because of head and spinal injuries? Well, they did some scans in Kolkata and found ‘foreign objects’ insider her. This school-teacher had already complained that the cops were pushing pebbles into her private parts.

I suppose they call it interrogation. I suppose that’s how things are.

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