29-06-2025
Old warrants, new arrests
A series of undulating hills leads you to Narayanpatna, a remote block headquartered in Odisha's Koraput district, bordering Andhra Pradesh, some 450 km south of Bhubaneswar, the State capital. The journey through its serpentine roads is a visual treat — lush green slopes, mist-kissed hillocks, and neatly carved terrace farms that cling to the hillsides. It's a landscape that tempts travellers to pause, breathe in its calm and to marvel at its untouched beauty.
Beneath this serene façade lies a terrain marked by turmoil. Few can articulate this better than Alibi Bingodika, a 55-year-old tribal woman from the little-known village of Dumsil. Alibi's daily routine is dictated by caution and fear. She rarely steps out of her village because she lives under the shadow of five criminal cases.
Her husband, Dibu Bingodika, too, is entangled in the legal net with three cases against him. Her two sons, Sisir and Kesab, 20 and 30, returned home last month after spending three and five years in prison, respectively.
Over the past year, 200 arrest warrants have been executed in Narayanpatna, says Pramod Behera, the inspector in charge of the police station here. He adds that there are 1,100 cases pending against villagers in the area since the tribal movement began in 2006. Some villagers have up to 50 cases against them, and the majority of Dumsil's villagers are either murderers, traitors, or rioters as per first information reports (FIRs) filed citing the pre-2024 Indian Penal Code. After the Koraput district court expressed displeasure over the backlog last year, senior police officers ordered swift disposal of all cases.
From the mid-1990s, the Chashi Mulia Adivasi Sangha (CMAS), a farmer-labourer group fighting for tribal rights, began demanding that external liquor vendors by non-tribal people be taken down since these were leading to addiction among the Adivasis. Soon, this led to the demand for land that belonged to them to be returned from people who had come in from outside the area and begun to control it. This was an area under the Indian Constitution's Fifth Schedule that administers certain lands that tribal people occupy. Under this, these lands cannot be transferred out of tribal control.
Through the years, those who worked under the CMAS have been called Naxals, with alleged links to the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist). Nachika Linga, the president of CMAS since 2009, was labelled an overground Maoist activist.
Many of those associated with the CMAS have surrendered to the police in the past. However, Koraput-based lawyer Gupteswar Panigrahy, who has represented several villagers in court, says, 'The police forced many tribals — often falsely implicated — to surrender under various government schemes.' He recalls the 'peaceful, democratic movement' peaked between 2006 and 2014 when tribals from the Narayanpatna and Bandhugaon regions began to demand land rights and a crackdown on the liquor trade. He adds, 'The surrenders were widely publicised in newspapers and on television, portraying CMAS members as Maoist supporters or militia who had laid down arms. In truth, the Sangha's members consistently cooperated with both the administration and the police.'
The current arrests come against the backdrop of the Home Ministry's crackdown on left-wing extremists with Home Minister Amit Shah vowing to 'eradicate Naxalism before the 31st of March 2026'.
Villagers and the police
In homes close to the Bingodikas', similar stories echo. Shanti Kendreka, 25, struggles to cope as a mother to four young children and the uncertainty around her husband Tisru's arrest. He has been in custody for four months now. Shifting cultivation — their only source of livelihood — barely provides enough for subsistence let alone bearing legal expenses.
Mina Hikaka, 34, another resident of Dumsil, returned home after spending eight years in jail, charged with rioting, sedition, and murder. His mother, Dhirma Hikaka, 60, whose three sons — including Mina — were arrested, is anxious. She has been told that cases are pending against her too. 'I never imagined that attending meetings and participating in demonstrations would bring a lifetime of trouble,' she says. 'All my sons have spent years in jail. Our family has endured unimaginable mental trauma. We live constantly under the shadow of arrest.' Her voice drops as she adds, 'I have lost the strength to untangle the legal mess my family is caught in.'
A decade on, villagers are yet to disentangle themselves from the legal mess. The police claim they are executing long-pending warrants which they argue are a consequence of villagers' participation in the violent insurgency that once held sway in these hills.
Biswapriya Kanungo, a lawyer and human rights activist, however, calls the arrests in Narayanpatna 'a cruel tactic, an attempt to tame tribals who once dared to challenge the system'.
Panigrahy, the lawyer who has fought for tribal rights, maintains that the people were framed. 'In nearly every case, the police wrongly listed numerous innocent tribals as absconding and filed chargesheets against them. But in reality none of them were fugitives — they continued to live openly in their villages, accessing government welfare schemes without interruption.'
In 2009, Baria Buti, blind and then aged 47, from Mankadjhola village in Narayanpatna , was picked up on charges of launching an attack on the Narayanpatna police station. He spent two years in jail, with villagers pleading before the police that he could not have been a left wing extremist. Almost all the accused in the 2009 police station cases were acquitted. Buti was too, but only after he spent two years in jail.
Sekru Sirikia, a resident of Tala Dekapadu village, 6 km from Narayanpatna police station, was arrested in 2014. He spent three years in jail as an undertrial in Koraput. At the time he had eight criminal cases against his name. In long legal battles, he was acquitted in all. Now he says the police are looking for him in two more cases.
The Narayanpatna movement
Narayanpatna is a region long marked by land alienation. Land alienation in the Adivasi context, is when tribal people are separated from the lands they have generational ties to. A book in Odia released in June 2025 on the Narayanpatna land movement, Ujani Jhanjabati by Nigamanand Sadangi, an activist, attributed tribal uprising on issues of land, forest, bondage, and liquor to a history of injustice, oppression, and exploitation.
'Two influential groups — moneylenders and liquor vendors — emerged in the Narayanpatna and Bandhugaon regions of Koraput district. These groups were primarily composed of trading communities from Andhra Pradesh and Odisha,' the book says.
These groups were initially involved in brewing and selling liquor, but they gradually expanded into the trade of forest produce, reserved by law for tribals. Over time, they entrenched their dominance by offering loans and fostering a dependency on alcohol among the tribal communities. As a result, the entire local economy came under the control of a few powerful players, the book says.
He points to the Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC) 2011 found that 65.35% families were landless in Narayanpatna. Based on the seven indicators, including quality of housing, level of education, landlessness, and income, among others, 85.95% off the families here were categorized as 'deprived'. In Narayanpatna, 76.82% of families depend on daily wages.
Until the year 2000, the system of bonded labour continued to exist in the remote villages of Narayanpatna. Adivasis had long been resisting this oppressive system. In June 2008, after years of simmering discontent, their resentment erupted into a revolt. Tribal villagers began occupying agricultural land held by non-tribals and forcibly harvested paddy. The CMAS later redistributed this land among tribal families.
'After generations of subjugation, the tribals finally tasted the power of assertion,' says Linga, the 50-year-old tribal leader who played a key role in mobilising villagers to reclaim their land. As a teenager in the late 1980s, Linga says he and his brother Kashi were forced to work as bonded labourers in the house of a moneylender in Podapadar village. 'Our wage was ₹60 a year. In return, we did backbreaking work, often without breakfast,' he recalls. 'All this was to repay a ₹100 loan that our father had taken from a cooperative society. Since we had no means to repay it, the moneylender struck a deal: he repaid the loan on our behalf, and took both of us into bondage for four years.'
Bondage never resolved the debt, Linga says. He began mobilising fellow tribals, encouraging them to harvest forest produce along with paddy cultivation. 'I faced violent resistance from both upper-caste and Dalit groups for uniting tribals,' he says. 'But we had taken a pledge — to liberate our people from bondage, no matter the cost.'
CMAS activists would mark the occupied land by planting red flags and went ahead with harvesting crops, often in defiance of a heavy police presence. Over time, the movement succeeded in reclaiming nearly 3,500 acres of land, says Linga.
A big price to pay
Fearing the movement could spread to other areas, paramilitary forces such as the Border Security Force and Central Reserve Police Force were deployed to suppress it. 'Stringent sections of the IPC were slapped on people participating in CMAS rallies. Many had over two dozen cases against them. The majority of the allegations were fabricated; police failed to prove any of the charges. All the accused villagers were acquitted,' says Manoranjan Routray, a Koraput-based lawyer who represented the tribals in over 400 cases linked to the Narayanpatna and Bandhugaon land movement.
In the 2009 attack on the Narayanpatna police station, 2,000 unnamed persons were cited in FIRs, with names of villagers added at later stages. There has been not a single conviction in the police station attack case so far.
In Dumsil village, Alibi sold her gold ornaments and spent her hard-earned savings fighting legal battles. 'Where do you find four members of a family being accused of waging war against the nation?' she says.
To avoid arrest, villagers paid a heavy price. As per cultural norms, tribal people accused are accompanied by a large group of community members when appearing at police stations or courts. The accused is expected to arrange transport and food for all. 'Many had to sell their bullocks or cows to manage legal costs,' says Routray. He hopes the higher judiciary will intervene and halt the arrests in Narayanpatna.
satyasundar.b@
Edited by Sunalini Mathew
