5 reasons why Chhattisgarh is becoming a police state

A young journalist Prabhat Singh was arrested by Chhattisgarh police on March 21 for allegedly making some confrontational comments on social networking microsite WhatsApp. Singh, a journalist with Patrika newspaper in Naxal-infested Bastar region, had had a run-in with some members of a local organisation Samajik Ekta Manch, which apparently has close ties with the Bastar police.

Singh allegedly had an argument with the Manch members after he was called "anti-national" on a WhatsApp chat group, which also has journalists as members. He had even lodged a complaint with the Chhattisgarh police. However, on the basis of a complaint filed by another journalist regarding the same incident, Singh was arrested. Some reports say that Singh was held for sharing an obscene message about a police officer.

Whatever may be the truth, Singh's arrest hints at the high-handedness of the Chhattisgarh government. In fact, Singh carries an image of being an honest, unbiased hard-working journalist who does not fear writing against the alleged excesses committed by the state police and the establishment.

The Raman Singh government is certainly behaving in a dictatorial manner. Here are five reasons why:

1. Attack on media

Journalists in Chhattisgarh work in a tense and insecure atmosphere. They have got sandwiched between the Naxals and the state police. Singh is the third journalist to be arrested in the Bastar area in the last ten months, while two others have been killed.

Media in the state, they claim, is a terrorised lot, with those publishing news exposing the maladministration being regularly threatened and attacked. Two journalists have been killed. Somaru Nag and Santosh Yadav have been arrested for their alleged proximity to the Naxals. State scribes have even held protests for the immediate release of their incarcerated counterparts.

Another journalist, Malini Subramaniam, who writes for Scroll.in, had faced violent protests from the same Samajik Ekta Manch which has a role to play in Singh's arrest. Subramaniam, whose house was stoned by unidentified miscreants, was also accused of being sympathetic towards the Naxals and biased against the police. She was interrogated by the police, initimated and finally forced to quit Bastar.

2. Attack on activists

Tribal rights activist, Soni Sori, who was recently attacked with an acid-like chemical in Chhattisgarh last month, had been arrested by the Delhi Police's crime branch for Chhattisgarh Police in 2011 on charges of acting as a conduit for Maoists.

Sori, a Scheduled Tribe (ST) school teacher, was tortured and sexually assaulted by Chhattisgarh state police during her imprisonment. However, by April 2013, the courts had acquitted her in six of the eight cases filed against her due to lack of evidence.

In a report that both government and Maoists targeted social workers, Human Rights Watch reported how activist Himanshu Kumar was forced to stop his grassroots work in Bastar because of "state intimidation". Several of his coworkers were arrested or threatened as a result of which he was forced to leave the state.

3. Targeting of political rivals

The Raman Singh government has also been accused of targeting political rivals. The Indian Express had reported how purported conversations had taken place between a section of the Chhattisgarh Congress leaders and persons close to the chief minister over the September 2014 Antargarh by-election. The Congress has alleged that Raman Singh is using "corrupt" means to remain in power.

Raman Singh, however, defended himself and said that his son-in-law, Puneet Gupta, whose voice is allegedly heard in the audio tapes, had nothing to do with politics and lashed out at the Congress saying the Opposition wants to connect this to his family. He said the incident was a result if the internal strife within the Congress.

Fingers were also raised over the role of the state government in the ghastly Naxal attack of 2013 in Jhiram Ghati that had killed several Congress leaders, including then state president Nand Kumar Patel and former Union minister VC Shukla.

After persistent demand from the Opposition, the Chhattisgarh government has decided to recommend a CBI probe into the incident. Acting home minister Ajay Chandrakar told the Assembly on March 16 that the government was ready to advise an investigation by the apex body.

4. Harassment of tribal people

The tribal people allegedly are at the receiving end of police atrocities. This has further alienated them in a state with a considerable adivasi population. According to reports, a tribal woman, Meena Khalko, was done to death in 2011 in a police encounter with the cops wrongly dubbing her a Maoist. She was allegedly gangraped by the police and killed. Fifteen women in Bijapur district lodged complaints of gang rape and police atrocities.

More recently, five young men were picked up by the Bastar police in August 2015 for questioning on charges of helping the Maoists to lay ambush on the security forces. According to reports, when the members of the missing boys went to the police station, the officers denied having detained them.

However, later the villagers discovered that the boys had been sent to jail. A week after the arrest, the police had a message conveyed to the villagers to reach the police station to collect the boys. However, when they reached there, they were sermonised by the senior police officers instead of getting the handover of their boys.

5. Fake surrenders and encounters

Congress leaders allege that false surrenders of Maoists is a common feature in Chhattisgarh. The Chhattisgarh police have earned the reputation of being notorious for passing off innocents as Maoists and staging their surrender for winning cheap publicity. Out of 70 tribal people who had surrendered in Sukma district in December 2015, just 10 were Maoists, as per the police records. The remaining 60 men and women were allegedly paid Rs 10,000 each to "surrender".

The police, however, maintained that the surrenders were genuine. "The remaining 60 are those who either had extended help to the Maoists or supported them in some way or the other," said Sukma, additional superintendent of police, Santosh Singh.

According to an Indian Express report, between June 1 and November 28, 2014, a total of 377 alleged Maoists are reported to have surrendered in Bastar. Police records showed that at least 270 of the 377 are actually ordinary villagers or petty criminals who are not fit to to be termed "surrendered Maoists".