Judicial probe cry into firing on tribals

Judicial probe cry into firing on tribals The Telegraph

26, Oct 2020

Bihar police had reportedly fired at peaceful Adivasi protesters at Adhaura block, injured seven activists, lathicharged them and then picked them up on ‘trumped-up charges’

The All India Union of Forest Working People, Citizens for Justice & Peace and the Delhi Solidarity Group had sent a fact-finding team to probe the incident and the report was released by CPM politburo member Brinda Karat on Friday.

Wikipedia

Social organisations have demanded a judicial inquiry into the firing at tribals in Bihar’s Kaimur on September 11 for protesting eviction from forests.

According to the report of the fact-finding team, Bihar police had fired at peaceful Adivasi protesters at Adhaura block, injured seven activists, lathicharged them and then picked them up on “trumped-up charges”. They were released on bail after over a month, on October 16.

“Two days later, in response to a ‘boycott election call’ given by the Kaimur Mukti Morcha, an organisation formed in the 1990s to democratically struggle for the land rights of the people of Kaimur, political heavyweights including the central minister of state for home, Nityanand Rai, air-dropped into the far reaches of Kaimur, pleading with the protesters to lift the boycott call,” the organisations said in a statement.

“The KMM’s demand to cancel all the decisions to earmark the Kaimur Forest Wildlife Sanctuary and Tiger Reserve in the area is a long-standing one. In the guise of the sanctuary and the reserve, the long-overdue land rights of the Adivasis were being further endangered,” the statement added.

The fact-finding team had Amir Sherwani Khan and Matadayal of the All India Union of Forest Working People, Raja Rabbi Hussain of the Delhi Solidarity Group and Aman Khan, a Supreme Court advocate.It has demanded the quashing of the FIR filed against all the activists, the setting up of a judicial commission of inquiry by the government to investigate the police firing and lathicharge and the prosecution of the police officers who had opened “illegal and unwarranted” fire. The team has also recommended compensation for those injured and implicated.

The original piece may be read here