Mysterious Deaths In Kalinga Nagar
By Surya Shankar
25 April, 2010
Countercurrents.org
Tata Steel Plant Foundation being led with Mysterious Murders & Forceful Demolitions in Kalinga Nagar
Late night yesterday villagers of Gadapur in Kalinga Nagar heard the sound of a tractor approaching. They were alarmed it might be the police again as in the last one week some 20-odd houses in the village have been demolished by the District Administration & Industrial Development Corporation of Orissa (IDCO) under heavy police deployment. The reason is that these houses belong to people who agreed to be displaced for the Tata factory and as per the Resettlement & Rehabilitation Policy they will not be given new houses until their old houses are demolished. But the tractor yesterday had come for some other reason and never reached the village. Whatever the reason was the people manning the tractor were secretive about it and didn’t even switch on the headlamp.
In the morning migrant workers from the nearby slums were collecting firewood when they discovered a dead body near Gadapur. This is where the villagers had noticed the tractor the night before. The deceased is Rasananda Patra, about 40-years old and a Dalit trolley puller from the Dalit hamlet Bandragadia located about 200-300 meters from Gadapur. Bandragadia hamlet no longer exists since a few days ago as it has been completely demolished. All 20 families living there had decided to be displaced except for one Sarat Patra who had not agreed to displacement but his house was nevertheless demolished. Sarat now lives in a makeshift leaf hut he has built where his house once stood. Many people who are refusing displacement have faced the same fate as Sarat. Yesterday, out of the 7 houses demolished in Champakoila village 3 were forcefully demolished while 2 days ago in Kalamatia village 2 houses were forcefully demolished. The people are aware that this is a provocation from the administration and therefore have not fallen prey yet by forcefully obstructing demolition. In the demolition drive today at Gobarghati, Nati Angarai’s house was forcefully demolished because he happens to be a leader of the Bisthapan Birodhi Jan Manch (BBJM). BBJM is a local non-violent & democratic tribal outfit opposing displacement for the last 5 years despite 14 people being killed in a police shooting on 2nd Jan 2006.
The mystery of the cause of Rasananda’s death might be solved after the post-mortem but its hard to understand how his dead body reached Bandragadia when he should have been in Tata’s transit camp. Maybe the mystery is not difficult to crack if one were to consider another murder case in the recent past. That of Sridhar Soy, a contractor engaged in petty works for Tata at Bhitar Manika. He was found dead in a forest with his motorbike and a case was registered against the leaders of the BBJM. Many BBJM people randomly arrested from markets, roads, hospitals and during the midnight raids on the villages in the last few months have been implicated in this case. But the mystery has hardly been solved. Sridhar Soy belongs to Masakia village located some 7 km away from the controversial site of the Tata plant where the BBBJM villages are located. There was no previous altercation between BBJM & Sridhor Soy, not even any communication. Sridhar Soy was a Tata contractor operating in a different area. How could villagers of the BBJM whose movement is terribly restricted by the police, BJD cadre and TATA goons manage to kill him and dispose his body in jungle far away from their villages? Then why would BBJM activists resort to murder of a contractor when they are involved in a movement of a different nature raising issues related to land, livelihood and displacement? Would it not weaken their movement that has received widespread support after the 2nd Jan massacre?
At the same time while several people have been arrested in the Sridhar Soy murder case not a single arrest has been made in the Amin
Banara murder case or the Jogendra Jamuda attempt to murder case though Jogendra Jamuda himself has been arrested. Jogendra was shot at while driving his motorbike with his mother in front of the Kalinga Ngr police station by unknown assailants. Amin Banara was killed in a shooting on 1st May ‘08 by Arbind Singh, a Tata contractor and his associates. Arbind Singh was actually gunning for Dabur Kalundia, a leader of the BBJM who has been targeted in another attack in his village some months ago. Arbind Singh was arrested that very day while he was trying to flee the area but released three months later and sources say he is now cooling his heels in the air-conditioned environs of Fortune Towers in Bhubaneswar.
So the mystery of Rasananda’s death last night might not be a mystery at all judging the recent history of murder cases in Kalinga Nagar. Villagers of Gadapur say that Rasananda was personally opposed to displacement and had been coerced by others to leave Bandragadia. Why he was killed and dumped in the land he never wanted to leave can evoke many wild guesses but foul play seems for sure and that foul play has an uncanny resemblance to the Sridhar Soy murder case. Amidst all this those responsible to investigate and solve the mysteries are openly biased against the BBJM. Sources say the SP of Jajpur has threatened the journalists of three mainstream media houses to not go to the BBJM villages. The media camps are also openly divided into pro-people and pro-Tata camps. Rumours abound in the area that the SP has a stake in the industrialisation process and that he has a relative who is complicit with the mining mafia in Keonjhar. Though these are charges that might be impossible to prove the SP himself has proved that he is capable of executing operations like 30 March ‘10 where armed security forces and Tata goons unleashed a brutal medieval-style invasion upon Baligotha village on the pretext of dealing with opposition by the villagers for the construction of the Common Corridor road project. They destroyed foodstocks, killed cattle, stole lifestock, destroyed valuables, looted money, set property afire and injure at least 40 people by firing rubber bullets and plastic pellets. After that the villagers were denied any kind of medical assistance. Then there are many more like the Jajpur SP involved in the rape of Kalinga Nagar who have a tainted history like the MD of IDCO, Priyabrat Patnaik (IAS) who was stripped of all duties for a couple of years for being involved in a high profile murder case in Bhubaneswar. He is known to be one of the masterminds behind the attack on peaceful women protestors in the proposed POSCO site in 2007.
Where does the common man’s quest for justice feature here? What about Sikur Kalundia, Balema Goipai and Ghanshyam Kalundia, all of whom died for lack of medical attention because their villages have been cordoned off from the rest of the world by police, Tata goons and BJD cadre?? Does that not amount to murder?? And What happened to the judicial probe into the 2nd Jan massacre that claimed 14 lives?? What happened to Amin Banara’s murderers?? Who attacked Jogendra Jamuda? Why were Dabur Kalundia’s attackers released? Who really killed Sridhar Soy?? And now, Rasananda, who killed him and dumped him in Bandragadia while he should have been in the transit camp? Will the BBJM be again framed?? It seems the foundations for the Tata Steel project shall bury many such mysteries, deaths & demolished homes. The BBJM though is gearing up to live upto its claim that they will rather die than leave their land.
Surya Shankar is a filmmaker based in Bhubaneswar and a follower of Adivasi and Dalit movements in Niyamgiri, Kalinga Nagar etc
