India orders probe into police atrocities in Chhattisgarh rebel areas

Source: Reuters Alertnet
24 Mar 2011 16:40

Sujeet Kumar
RAIPUR, India (AlertNet) - Indian authorities have launched a probe after allegations that security forces burnt down hundreds of homes of poor tribal villagers in insurgency-wracked heartlands of the country, according to a senior government official.

Tribes people in the central state of Chhattisgarh claim around 300 police and paramilitary officers -- deployed in the region to battle Maoist rebels -- went on a rampage from March 14 to 16, razing to the ground over 200 homes across three hamlets in the region's troubled Dantewada district.

"A four-member panel has been formed to report on the losses due to burning of houses allegedly by police," R.Prasanna, the senior-most civil servant in Dantewada, told AlertNet.

"The panel will comprise of a journalist, one from civil society and one lecturer from a government college and the committee to be headed by a sub-divisional magistrate," he said, adding that an outcome would be expected within a month.

The Maoist insurgency, waged mostly from the forests of central and eastern India, has intensified dramatically since early 2005 leaving tens of thousands of villagers uprooted and hundreds killed, tortured or persecuted by both sides.

Rights activists say the local population living in the mineral-rich state have been persecuted by both the security forces and the Maoists, who want to build a Communist state.

Villagers accuse the rebels of forced recruitment, including the recruitment of children, and widespread extortion.

But they say they also face widespread abuses by government-backed vigilantes and security forces, who in previous anti-Maoist drives, have conducted arbitrary arrests, torture and killings, accusing the civilians of supporting the rebels.

Local newspapers carried photographs of burnt houses and reports of the alleged violations, but police have denied the charges.

"It's all Maoist-propaganda, nothing happened there. I have not received any complaint of police brutalities," S.R.P. Kalluri, senior superintendent of police in Dantewada told AlertNet.