Bloodbath in Orissa

Tribals up in arms against anti-people development

Basudev Mahapatra Bhubaneshwar

The excitement of new year on January 2 at 11 a.m. was still in the air when people living in the villages in and around Kalinga Nagar Industrial Complex, Jajpur district, near the capital Bhubaneshwar, came to know that TISCO had set heavy earthmovers and machineries to level the fields still under their possession. Soon people came out with lathis and other available weapons like bows and arrows. They congregated near the site and marched in groups towards the TISCO site to protest against such work without any prior notice to people.

The police tried to stop them by first flinging tear gas canisters. Next it tried rubber bullets. The march kept on. Finally, real bullets were fired by the police on the people at 12:30 p.m. The congregated mass dispersed. Twelve civilians and one policeman succumbed. This incident brought to fore the anti-people development led by the Orissa chief minister, Naveen Pattnaik and his band of ministers. Opposition took political mileage out of it. The government in its defence turned on the Jajpur district collector (DC) and the superintendent of police (SP), who were not even present at the site, according to eyewitnesses. The DC and SP were dutifully transferred. The additional DM, Kalinga Nagar, Santh Gopalan, was believed to have given the order to fire at the mass,  till it later came to light that the tahsildar, Kalinga Nagar had signed the order restricting the police officials to fire below waist. But the police people forgot about all restrictions while firing and even didn't hesitate to mutilate the dead bodies.

However, nobody including the new DC dares to confirm this because the state government has ordered for a judicial probe into the matter. Additional pressure, as the state and its adjoining areas erupted in protest, led to the government increasing the ex gratia to be paid to the next of kin of the victims of the police firing from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 5 lakh. The chief minister also directed that a person from each affected family be provided a job in the government or in a public sector undertaking and the injured persons should get an ex-gratia of Rs 50,000. He is reported not to have even visited the site. As part of the political mileage, Congress party head Sonia Gandhi announced a grant of Rs 5 lakh from the central government and another Rs 1 lakh from the All India Congress Committee to the surviving families of those killed in the police firing.

While the majority, including Bharatiya Janata Party, a partner of the ruling coalition said that the police, intelligence and district administration were responsible, some district officials and ministers maintained that the police was compelled to fire because of the aggression of the tribal protestors who were armed and first attacked the police with lathis and bows and arrows. Reacting to such a statement the group of tribal people gathered at Ambagadia said, 'Neither the police nor the officials know how the tribals attack. Not a single policeman would have gone alive from the place if we had used our bows and arrows against them. Our people died with bullets; did a single police officer die with our arrows? How can they blame us like this? However, it won't be the same in future. We will definitely use our bows and arrows to protect ourselves and our rights.'