The Father And Daughter’s Case Highlights How People Have Got Entangled In The Crossfire Between Cops & Naxals
Supriya Sharma TNN
Agdalpur (Bastar): A police team from Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada raided PUCL general secretary Kavita Srivastava’s Sori the cops are looking for is a victim of Maoist violence herself.
“They said a k h a t a r n a k (dangerous) naxalite was being shielded in my house,” said Srivastava, convenor of the Right to Food Campaign’s steering group.
The Right to Food Campaign issued a statement condemning the “arbitrary raid” at Srivastava house. The statement signed by activists, including Aruna Roy, Jean Dreze, Binayak Sen and Colin Gonsalves, said this was “yet another instance ofharassment of human rights workers under the cover of fighting Naxalism”.
Dantewada SP Ankit Garg, however, said, “We had information that naxalite accomplice Soni Sori was hiding at Srivastava’s house. But our team could not find her there.”
Who is Soni Sori? Why would Chhattisgarh police travel all the way to Jaipur to trace her?
On bed number 23 of the cramped surgical ward III of Jagdalpur’s Maharani government hospital, a 70-yearold man lies awake contemplating death, his own and that of his family. “I say just kill us, end our agony,” he says, his voice soft and unwavering.
Madru Ram Sori is Soni’s father. He holds himself up with dignity, despite gnawing pain from a near- fatal bullet injury on his right leg. Maoists shot him in June. “The Naxals are hitting us from the front and the police from the back. I ask the government to have mercy and end our misery, k r i p a k a r k e h u m s a b k o m a a r d o (Please kill us).”
On the night of June 14, armed Maoists stormed Madru’s house in Bade Bedma village. After shooting him, they ransacked his house and looted gold and valuables, sacks of grain and 30 cows. They tied up the entire family, took them away to the jungle and left Madru to die.
But Madru survived and his family returned. “When we came back in the morning, he was lying there asking for water. There was no utensil in the house. Everything was gone. I grabbed the earthen vessel we use for pigs and brought him water,” says his 17-year-old daughter Dhaneshwari.
For a family attacked by Maoists, it came as a shock when two months later, on September 9, Dantewada police charged Madru’s elder daughter Soni for being a ‘naxalite accomplice’. Soni, a school teacher, was accused of collecting Rs 15 lakh from an Essar group contractor.
“If my daughter was with the Maoists, would they have shot me and looted everything I had?” Madru asks.
Eldest of three brothers, Madru was born in a family of village leaders. He could not study, but one of his younger brothers, Sonuram Sori, became the area’s first postgraduate and a sales tax inspector. The other, Nandaram Sori, was elected MLA. Madru was Bade Bedma sarpanch thrice.
“People from three of the five hamlets began attending their (Maoist) meetings, but people from my neighbourhood, Patelpara, did not go. The Maoist held it against me that my people did not join them,” Madru says.
In 2008, Maoists stabbed an old man on the outskirts of the village and slit his throat. “No one kills a chicken like that,” recalls Madru. A police complaint was filed, which further antagonised the Maoists.
“People of this area have been terrorized by the Naxals into doing their bidding,” he claims. Could it be that his daughter Soni had been coerced into aiding the Maoists?
“Last year, the police implicated her in the attack on Congress leader Avdesh Gautam’s house. When the attack took place, Soni was in this hospital looking after her ailing mother”.
Madru tried to find out why the police were harassing Soni. He met then Dantewada SSP SRP Kalluri. “He asked me ‘why does your daughter live and work in an interior area?’ I replied, ‘Sir, she needs the job to feed her three children’. He said she must be going for Maoist meetings and giving them supplies. I replied, ‘Sir, doesn’t everybody?’ He asked, ‘Do you?’ I said, ‘No, but then I am an old man, I can afford to die’. He then laughed,” recalls Madru.
Although her husband was arrested in the case, the warrant against Soni was not executed. Madru’s son Ramdev claims Soni went to Kuakonda police station to submit a letter seeking compensation for the family losses the day the police accused her of collecting Rs 15 lakh for the Maoists.
Soon after, Soni went into hiding. For the first few days, she called her brother and father. “There hasn’t been a single call in the last four days,” says Ramdev.
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