Fake Encounters in Jharkhand

By Gladson Dungdung

In the afternoon on July 5, 2010, the security forces comprising of JAP and SAF under the leadership of E.H. Siddique the officer-in-charge of Tamar Police Station arrived to Gunti village and picked up 45 year-old Etwa Munda of Papirdah village comes under Tamar police station of Ranchi district in Jharkhand, when he was in the house of his relative Manav Munda. The police also caught a girl Bengi Kumari and escorted both of them towards Jabla pahari (forest). After sometime, the villagers heard the sound of firing and rushed toward the spot. They were shocked to see the dead body of Etwa Munda laying on the ground. The police framed the cold-blooded murder of Etwa Munda as a result of an encounter between the police and the Maoists. The police also depicted him as a hardcore Maoist who was very closed to the Maoist Zonal commander Kundan Pahan. Perhaps, Etwa Munda was not an innocent person but under which laws the police killed him in a fake encounter is the question needs to be answered.

Since the villagers were fully aware of the cold-blooded murder of Etwa Munda therefore the police spared Bengi Kumari and threatened the villagers and family members of the deceased for keeping quite. However, the villagers wanted to raise the issue therefore they approached to a local activist Xavier Soy and told him about the fake encounter. Meanwhile, when the police came to know about Xavier Soy’s acts of attempting to unearth the fact of the fake encounter and encouraging the villagers for raising the issue, the police put Xavier Soy with his school going son behind the bars alleging them of keeping the Maoist literature in their house. The police also do not allow the outsiders especially the Human Rights Activists and the Journalists to roam in the area so that the truth remained buried. Finally, the police succeeded in shutting up the villagers’ mouths and in framing the cold-blooded murder as a genuine case of encounter between the police and the Maoists.