Stalled Salwa Judum Judgement

What is the issue?

What is the Salwa Judum judgement?

Salwa Judum is a vigilante movement started in 2005.
It was sponsored by the Chhattisgarh and Central government, to fight against the Maoists.
On July 5, 2011, Justices B. Sudershan Reddy and S.S. Nijjar, in a historic judgment, banned Salwa Judum.
The surrendered Maoists and untrained villagers were used in frontline counter-insurgency operations as Special Police Officers (SPOs).
The Court ruled this practice as unconstitutional.
It directed that the existing SPOs be redeployed in traffic management or other such safe duties.
Other matters were left pending.
These included prosecution of security forces and others involved in human rights violations, and rehabilitation of villagers who had suffered violence.
The State had been asked to submit comprehensive plans for these.

How was the State’s response?

Ten years on, nothing has been done to implement the judgment.
Instead, the State government has merely renamed the SPOs.
They are now known working as the District Reserve Guard (DRG).
Most of the DRG members are captured or surrendered Maoists.
They are given automatic weaponry as soon as they join the police force.
Some of them get one-three months of training, and some not even that.
They commit the most excesses against their former fellow villagers.
They suffer the most casualties in any operation.
But, they are paid much less than the regular constabulary.
These were all the reasons the judges had outlawed their use, but all of them continues.
A contempt petition filed in 2012 in this regard is still awaiting hearing.

What are the excesses committed over the years?

At its peak between 2005 and 2007, the Judum involved forcing villagers into government-controlled camps.
Those who refused were punished by having their villages burnt.
Hundreds of people were killed, and their deaths were not even recorded as ‘encounters’.
Villagers fled to neighbouring States or into the forests around their villages.
Sangham members were either jailed or compelled to join the security forces as SPOs.
[Sangham members are the active but unarmed Maoist sympathisers.]
Thousands of innocent villagers were arrested en masse by the police as suspected Maoists.
They spend long years in jail before being acquitted.
For such villagers, meeting their families is difficult and hiring lawyers drains their meagre resources.
Even as a few dedicated human rights lawyers have tried to help, the scale of arrests is massive.
Deaths in encounters between jawans and Maoists periodically hit the national headlines.
But extrajudicial killings of villagers and Maoists and killings of suspected informers by Maoists continue at a steady pace without much notice.

What is the present condition?

Today, the Judum camps are virtually empty.
Only the former SPOs and their families are remaining, in now permanent houses.
Villagers split between those who went to the camp and those who went to the forest are now reconciled.
People have come back and started cultivation.
An entire generation has grown up and have embarked on new struggles.
Across the region, villagers are demanding schools and health centres.
Instead, what they have got in abundance are CRPF camps at intervals of less than 5 km.
Roads are being bulldozed through what were once dense forests.
The government and security forces have been indicted in some cases by independent inquiries.
But no steps have been taken to prosecute those responsible.
Moving forward, both sides should get serious about peace talks.

Source: The Hindu