My first question to you is about the escalating arrests of activists. Raghu Midiyami, the former head of Moolvasi Bachao Manch (MBM), has been arrested. Last year, activist leader Suneeta Pottam was arrested. The Chhattisgarh government banned MBM in November 2024. What do you make of all this repression?

Everyday 5 or 10 Adivasis are arrested; fake encounters are carried out. The main objective behind this is to end the lives of Adivasis. Whoever fights in Bastar, be it the MBM or Soni Sori or Hidme Markam, are branded naxalites and crushed. The same has been done to Suneeta.

Suneeta’s native place, Gangaloor in Bijapur district [she is from Posnar], is filled with hills due for mining. If the Central and State governments need to mine, whom will it target to achieve its goals? Those living there: the Adivasis. If the land has to be cleared, the Adivasis must be killed. And if you want to eliminate the Adivasis, you need to target Adivasi leaders through bans and arrests. All this is part of a well thought-out strategy of the government to remove Adivasis from the forests and give the mineral-rich hills to big capitalists. Naxalite is a tag they give. The real struggle is against those of us living in the forests.

Security personnel after an encounter with naxalites in Bijapur district, Chhattisgarh, on January 17, 2025. | Photo Credit: PTI

Home Minister Amit Shah has publicly announced that the ongoing Operation Kagar will eliminate Maoism/Naxalism by March 31, 2026. The earlier offensive was called Samadhan-Prahar; before that, there were other names. What is the reason behind this setting of a deadline, this public announcement? 

What the Home Minister is saying now is not new. The dialogue has been delivered before. Only, this time he is delivering it more actively, going from State to State, on international platforms, everywhere.

Before this, there was Salwa Judum. Who was the worst affected by Salwa Judum? The Adivasis. There was the Bastar Battalion, the Danteshwari Fighters, the Commando Battalion for Resolute Action (CoBRA) battalion, and many more. Police camps were set up, every type of force was brought in to eliminate Adivasis.

Where fake encounters happen, we are not allowed to go to the location and ask questions. When we try to speak to the media and raise our voices, we are silenced. The state speaks to the whole world. But the voices of the people and of the social workers of Bastar are crushed.

Amit Shah is saying that Maoists will be eliminated by 2026. What is the real strategy behind this? If any man is killed in the name of being a Maoist, it is claimed that the person has a bounty/reward money of 2 lakh, 3 lakh, 4 lakh on his head. It is Adivasi peasants who are killed in this manner, but they are called Maoists. We’ve even heard of 60 lakh and 1.5 crore reward money on people’s heads who have been killed. You kill him and you disburse the reward.

But legally, what should happen? First, a post-mortem. The village to which the killed Maoist belongs, its gram panchayat, should be informed; the family should be informed; the people of the village, particularly the educated, should be told.

But they do not do any of this. They do not do a post-mortem. They do not print the information in newspapers. After a person is killed, a reward money for his capture is announced. This is why there is so much bloodshed here every day. Kill a person and take money. Surrender and take money.

My question to the Central and State governments is, where does the money come from? Do you have accounts for this?

And in all this militarisation, the bullets have not stopped flying. If Amit Shah and the Central government want to take on the Maoists, they should do this without killing innocent Adivasis, without ruining the jungles and hills, without causing harm to the environment. The hills are burning, the rivers are being destroyed, Adivasi children are being killed. They are claiming that they are eliminating Maoists, but this is annihilation of Adivasis, not of Maoists.

Is the reward money not the people’s money? Where are the accounts for this? Who allocates it, who audits it, where is it done? I am prepared to unearth this information. If I try to file applications to get answers to these questions, I will be branded a naxalite and killed or jailed. But we are not afraid of being killed or jailed because our fight is for our jungles and for humanity.

The people of Chintagufa, the most troubled village in the Bastar range. They have repeatedly accused the personnel of the Central Reserve Police Force from the nearby camp of atrocities. | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement

I read that a battalion of 2,500 personnel is being brought to Bastar to open camps there. New weaponry like under barrel grenade launchers, unmanned aerial vehicles, and drones are being used to conduct aerial surveillance. How does all this activity disrupt the lives of villagers?

Villagers are unable to sleep. After establishing camps, the army personnel bombard villages. Adivasi peasants cannot go to the fields, cannot fetch water, gather firewood or tendu leaves. This is the prevailing situation in Bijapur.

I was staying the night in a village beyond Silger. I was woken up around 1 am by the sound of bombs. A pregnant woman, who was with me, said that this was a daily occurrence and even the child in her womb was disturbed by these sounds. She asked me to touch her belly and see for myself that the baby was restless. I have photographs and videos of the impact of the bombardment on the environment and the land. You are not only killing people but also the environment. So this is a matter of importance for the whole country, not just for us.

Why is the paramilitary all over the place? Is there a need for so many of them? Why does the government not engage in dialogue? Before you talk to the Maoists, why don’t you talk to the people of Bastar? But the government does not want to have this dialogue in an open manner.

The day the state stops giving out money, the atrocities against Adivasis will also stop. You won’t believe, there are people lying dead—Aitu with a 4 lakh reward, Hidma with a 3 lakh reward, Joga with a 2 lakh reward; after killing them the paramilitary forces dance—they get DJs and soundboxes to celebrate. Why? Because of money.

The bodies of 31 of the 38 Maoists killed along the forested stretch along the Narayanpur-Dantewada border laid out at the Dantewada police lines on October 5, 2024. | Photo Credit: SHUBHOMOY SIKDAR

This is utterly shocking. In India, there is a broad perception that the army is the defender of the land. Here, the army is killing our countrymen and celebrating. But this news is not reaching people outside Bastar. Women and children are also being assaulted, right?

Children are facing bullets. In the Indravati river area, four children were hit by bullets. We have the records.

There was a breastfeeding child, roughly a year old. When the paramilitary forces reached the village, the father ran away with the child into the forest. He thought that if the child cries out, he would be caught. He hid with the child. They caught him and killed him. They took the child to another village and gave it to the people there. I got a call saying that a child is desperately seeking its mother because it needs to be fed.

When we met the children who had been injured during the paramilitary operation, there were maggots in their wounds. When the paramilitary does the encounters, they bring the dead body to the camps so that they can collect the reward money. But if the bullets hit children, they do not bring the children to the camps because they get no money in that case. Why is there no enquiry if bullets inadvertently hit women or children or the elderly?

They leave the children to die, and all this information is buried. When you confront them, they claim that the children were killed in the crossfire. You also have children; their lives should matter to you. But then, these are Adivasi children—their death makes no difference.

There is an established rulebook stipulating the procedures to be followed if the police are to touch a woman after entering her home. They are not followed here. The paramilitary enters any home early in the morning when the women are threshing grain, washing clothes or are engaged in household activities. They tear their clothes, take off their sarees, assault them, try to rape them—there are so many of such cases.

Take the case of Sudha—she was taken from her home by the paramilitary. The other women in the village begged the paramilitary to leave her, to file a case against her if needed but not to take her. They forcefully took her into the jungle, not too far from her home, and raped her repeatedly till she died. No bullets were fired. When she drew her last breath, they said a naxal has been encountered.

Her body was brought to the Dantewada hospital. I was told she was shot and killed. I asked the doctor on duty to show me the body. Not a single bullet wound. I asked, “If you are claiming this is an encounter, why is there no bullet wound on her?”

The women of Bastar tell me—Soni didi, we are not afraid of dying. Fire bullets at us. But do not rape us. We are ready to die but we are not ready to endure rape. Because here, rape is the most dangerous thing.

Women are tortured alive, abused, clawed, raped, and then killed with bullets. How many women’s wounded and swollen private parts have I seen! How many swollen and bruised thighs!

These things happen every day in Bastar. But if you speak about this, you are branded a Maoist. People are beaten up brutally, their organs are cut off. A woman told me that they cut off the private parts of her husband, son, brother while they were alive. Here women, children, brothers, fathers, the jungle, animals and birds, nothing is safe.

They fire at people and rape women so that they leave. At the time of Salwa Judum, lakhs of people left for Warangal. All this is being done to clear out the people from the land. After emptying the land, they intend to give it to their favourite big capitalists.

A young girl from Parchanpal village, Bastar, sets off to collect potable water from a place far away from her home. November 2008. | Photo Credit: AKHILESH KUMAR

When I came to Bastar two years ago, I saw people do not have running water, electricity. Schools and hospitals were far away. But roads that looked like they belonged to an eight-lane highway were being constructed. The paramilitary forces were advertising online that they were building camps as Integrated Development Centres, with a bank, PDS (ration shop), anganwadi, school, and hospital. These welfare services are supposed to be provided by the government; why is the paramilitary carrying out these tasks? How do you see this; what is the purpose of building these camps? 

When there are gram sabhas with a sarpanch and a secretary—they are supreme, according to the law—why are the paramilitary forces building roads? Give us roads that would take our children to the school and back, roads that would take us to the bazaar and back. But these big roads are not being built for the Adivasis living in the jungles. These roads are meant to establish connection with the mineral-rich hills. After exploiting the hills, extracting the minerals, they will transport them via the big roads.

Can the Central government or Amit Shah give it in writing that not a single piece of land or resources will be taken away from the Adivasis, that no mining will take place, that the land will not be exploited, and the environment will not be ruined? I am prepared to take on the challenge of bringing all the Adivasis of Bastar together and even speak to the Maoists. But the government should speak to us first, after assuring us that not a single piece of Adivasi land will be taken away.

All the atrocities are being carried out in the name of development. How do you look at this “development discourse”? 

We oppose companies. For example, the NMDC [National Mineral Development Corporation, a public-sector undertaking] has been mining in this area for over 75 years. We thought it would be good for the coming generations; our people will get jobs, hospitals, schools; the future will be secured for all. Today, the hills are hollowed out, but people living below the hills are forced to drink red, poisoned water from the iron ore mines. Babies do not survive; agricultural lands are destroyed. They live by selling minor forest produce. If this is what mining does, why would people not protest against it, tell me?

In Pidiya, there is no school. They will claim that Maoists do not allow the building of schools. There are no hospitals. They will claim that Maoists are not letting them build hospitals. People do not have land certificates. They will say Maoists do not allow them to make land certificates. There are no anganwadis. They will say Maoists do not let them set up anganwadis. None of the streets, lanes and villages has electricity. They will say Maoists do not let them set up electric poles.

All the village roads should be paved; there should be electricity, hospitals, water connections, and facilities for children. Development begins there. Only after this, big roads should come. But they only speak of big roads.

When a journalist like Mukesh Chandrakar raised the issue of roads, he was killed. Would you call him anti-development? Those who tell the truth are mowed down. He brought out the truth.

We too want development, but not the kind of development they speak of. Give us our fundamental rights first. After that they can do development. But instead, all they want to do is to serve these companies.