This is the story of a brave tribal woman who is fighting for justice. Her name is Ledha. Perhaps she is the first tribal woman who stood courageously against a cruel, perverted Superintendent of Police who raped her. She is fighting the case in the Chhatisgarh Court.

Ledha is from a small village in Sarguja District in Chhatisgarh. She was married to Ramesh Nageshia, a tribal who was a member of the Maoist party. Merely because Ledha was married to him she was also branded a Naxalite and was sent to jail on fabricated charges that she participated in a land mine attack, which killed three CRPF personnel. She was arrested in the name Seema and sent to jail for one and half years. She had conceived by the time she was arrested. She languished in jail during her pregnancy and due to malnutrition gave birth to a weak child. Due to the efforts of her lawyer Amarnath Pandey she got bail for one month to deliver the child. She was sent back to jail but finally she was acquitted from the case.

Ledha’s advocate advised her to show the acquittal order at the police station to ensure the police would not harass her in future. Ledha went and showed the order of acquittal to the police. They pressurized her to convince her husband to surrender. They even lured her with an offer of money and a job for her husband. As Ledha had a child to take care of, she was tempted by the offer. So she naively believed the police and convinced her husband. She told him that even if something went wrong, at worst he would have to serve time, nothing worse. She dreamed of having a nice future with her husband and the child.

The S.P. of Sarguja District, one Kalluri arranged for the surrender of Ramesh Nageshia on May 28, 2006. As planned, a police contingency from Shankergarh, led by SP Kalluri himself, participated in the task. An additional police force joined them in Kusmi with Ledha accompanying them.

Shot Dead

The police got down from their vehicles and walked to the village where Ledha’s husband Ramesh was already waiting. Immediately they grabbed him and severely beat him up. Then S.P. Kalluri ordered both Ledha and her husband to sit in the Gram Panchayat secretary’s house. They both sat there talking. A few minutes later, Assistant Platoon Commander Brijesh Tiwari of the Special Armed Forces came into the house. Without much ado he reached out for his gun and shot Ramesh dead.

A shocked Ledha screamed in terror. She was brought to S.P. Kalluri who ordered the police to kill her also. But somebody commented that 'after all she was a woman, so why kill her?' Everybody laughed at this. She was taken to Shankergarh Police Station and later released after being thoroughly terrorized not to reveal what happened in front of her eyes. Next day a very usual story appeared in the daily newspapers that is, a Naxalite was killed in an 'encounter' within the Shankergarh Police Station limits.

A terror-stricken Ledha went back to her relatives' home and did not dare come out for several days. Then on September 30 when she returned to her village, she heard that the police were searching for her. Soon she was picked up on Dusserah and taken to the police station where she was ordered to remove her clothes. She refused. Then the police brought her parents and they beat her father severely until she obeyed them.

Gang Raped

A little while later, SP Kalluri came and slapped her on the face. Ledha fell to the ground with her child. The child was crying uncontrollably, and her old parents begged him to leave her alone but SP Kalluri raped her. He went to the extent of such cruelty that he inserted green chillies into her vagina. She was then locked up. Next day Dhiraj Jaiswal, a notorious S.P.O. visited her with four other constables thoroughly intoxicated. They all gang raped her. According to Ledha, she was subjected to rape for about 10 days—in front of her little child who due to the trauma cannot walk or talk but only cries incessantly. Finally after days and weeks of agony Ledha had been released. A torn and shattered Ledha met with a lawyer with great difficulty in January 2007. She filed a case against S.P. Kalluri and others in the Chhatisgarh High Court. The case was admitted recently.

Later that month a joint fact finding team initiated by the Committee Against Violence On Women (CAVOW) and People's Union on Civil Liberties (PUCL), Chhatisgarh visited Sarguja district. When team members met Ledha, who was in hiding for security reasons, she narrated her story to them. They saw that she was a brave woman who was determined to fight for justice. But she was also feeling very guilty for believing the police and making her husband a victim. And the pain in her eyes was intense when she lamented, “Dhoka Khaliye hum” (we were betrayed.) She is a tiny lean figure. Her child Ranjita is weak and traumatized. Whenever somebody touches her mother she becomes shaken and terrorized. She also cries uncontrollably, the trauma she underwent clearly visible on her tiny face.

Furthermore, Ledha is unable to work for a living as she has been fighting the state and is also facing constant threat. But she does not want to give up and says, “If death is for sure, let me fight and die.” When someone asked her what punishment the culprits should get she replied without hesitating “mauth ki sajaa, aur kya?” (Of course, death punishment. What else?)

Serious Allegations

It is not the first time that state officials have used rape as a weapon against women to 'control' or suppress their movements. It is also not the first time, serious allegations have been levelled again S.P. Kalluri and his men. Even previously he was accused of rape, fake encounters, torture in police custody, indiscriminate searches, lathi charges, illegal detention, and terrorizing villagers. There have also been numerous media reports on the growing excesses of the police.

It was subsequent to these complaints and media reports that a group of civil rights activists including journalists, lawyers and academicians visited Sarguja district under the initiative of CAVOW and PUCL Chhatisgarh from January 27 to 29 this year. The team toured the area, talked to the people and collected supporting documents. There were indeed many charges against S.P. Kalluri.

The fact-finding team found numerous instances where villagers complained of encounter killings of those who opposed the police. They said the victims were arrested, tortured in police custody and shot dead later in fake encounters. For instance, Narayan a Zonal Commander was picked up from Kotsari village where he had gone to attend a karma festival. At the time, he had been sleeping at the house of a local villager and killed in a fake encounter the next morning. Most of the villagers in this village were too terrified to speak openly fearing police reprisal. In another incident, Sagar and Shoma were picked up while they were returning to their village and they too were later shown on media to be killed in an 'encounter' with police.

Fake Encounters

This process of extra judicial killings is not limited to purported Naxalites but even extends to innocent villagers. Thus five people shot dead in Lakrakona village in a fake encounter with police were later labelled as Naxalites. The postmortem report of one of the deceased Giriwar, made available to the fact-finding team shows that the bullet entered from the top right hand shoulder and exited from the bottom left breast. This is a wound, which would typically be inflicted on a person who is shot from above while he is in a kneeling-down position. The team has made a fairly comprehensive record of such cases and plans to release it in the next PUCL convention.

The extent of lawlessness within the police administration is reflected by the growing extra official power of Assistant Platoon Commander (S.I) Brijesh Tiwari, who is notoriously known as the 'encounter specialist'. A First Information Report (FIR) has been lodged against him by a local contractor whose son was badly beaten up and then threatened by him. Even more blatant is the terror tactics employed by Dhiraj Jaiswal, a SPO who is not even a formal member of the police force but enjoys the patronage of S.P. Kalluri. He moves around with a group of persons heavily armed with AK47s and LMGs. He has physically threatened trade union leaders and political activists and even fired at them. It is alleged he has close links with the coal and bauxite mining mafia, which is active in the region. The colour newspaper advertisements with his photograph alongside S.P. Kalluri reflect his growing influence. The intolerance of the police towards all democratic processes has been manifest in a range of incidents such as the physical assault on members of the national level Rozgar Yatra led by Jean Dreze, an eminent economist. In a subsequent inquiry following the assault, the persons who went to depose had been threatened and intimidated by S.P. Kalluri to withdraw their complaints.

It has also been alleged that while investigating a rape case and a double murder, which led to a massive demonstration in the Ambikapur town, the police seem to have gone to extraordinary lengths to implicate poor Adivasi tribal members in the crimes. It is commonly believed this was to protect some powerful persons who were the alleged culprits. Thus the police administration has become a law unto themselves terrorizing, raping and killing local people with the district administration all abdicating responsibility in holding them accountable. IT seems the system of checks and balances, which is supposed to curtail such excesses, is conspicuously absent.

At the completion of their mission, the fact finding team recommended that a high powered committee consisting of judges and human rights activists be constituted to investigate the complaints of police atrocities and that speedy measures be taken to bring to justice the perpetrators. It was also recommended that during the course of investigation the accused policemen remain suspended from duty to enable witnesses to come forward and testify.

The fact finding team members were Sudha Bharadwaj, Advocate High Court Bilaspur; K.J. Mukherjee, Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi; C. Vanaja, Journalist & Film maker, Hyderabad; Geeta Charusivam, CAVOW, Chennai; Ajay T.G., Chhatisgarh PUCL; Anuradha, CAVOW; Anil Kumar, Media Researcher, Wardha.