Bloody Steel

The Naveen Patnaik regime has unleashed the terror of police and party goons to push the Tata steel plant at any cost. Even if democracy is crushed at gun-point
Bibhuti Pati Kalinganagar (Orissa)

Chandia has remained the epicentre of tribal resistance for the Bisthapan Birodhi Jan Manch (BBJM) (Anti-Displacement People's Front), the organisation spearheading the movement against the Tata steel plant project in Kalinganagar. Since January 2, 2006 - the day police gunned down 14 adivasi protestors - the police and administration have been unable to enter the village. Tribals had blocked the highway, there was a national outcry, resistance groups joined in solidarity, and politicians, including Sonia Gandhi, visited Kalinganagar. 

However, the administration continued to hatch conspiracies to launch an armed assault on the non-violent movement. Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, operating openly as representative of Indian and multinational big business, ordered the police to crush the people's movement. He also manufactured alibis. The latest common corridor project is one of them. 

The common corridor, touted to be the conduit to the industrial hub of Kalinganagar, is an 8-km road from Rabana to Neelachal Ispat Nigam Square. To construct that, umpteen platoons of armed police were mobilised; even the anti-Maoist Special Operation Group (SOG) was deployed on March 30, 2010. What would one construe of it? Is the entire mobilisation merely for the construction of an 8-km road? Or, is it a dress rehearsal for the final assault? 

Sensing the danger, hundreds of BBJM activists tried to stall the construction work. The police attacked the people with rubber bullets and teargas shells. The people retreated; the police chased them, beating them ruthlessly. 'Tata goons' and BJP lumpens joined the armed police in ransacking, burning, looting and beating up villagers. At least 15 people were seriously injured. But they could not be taken to hospitals because the entire place has been under siege. Some villagers fled to the forests and some took refuge at Baligotha. In the evening, police attacked Baligotha and went berserk, damaging the houses of people's leaders. Section 144 of CrPC was clamped in the entire common corridor area.

To cover up the police brutality, journalists, social activists and political leaders were not allowed to enter the area - but the goons were given a free run. After the fall of Baligotha, Chandia held out and continued to resist. On May 5, 2010, BBJM organised a meeting at Chandia to condemn the police action with traditional weapons - bows and arrows. Various Left forces expressed solidarity, and warned the government not to escalate the violence. 

On May 6, eight armed platoons entered Chandia, supposedly to help the displaced people to take their belongings to a rehabilitation colony. At least 12 houses were razed, and a dozen more at Bamiagoth. 

On May 12, 8 am, the police went for the kill. The operation began with the announcement that male members must leave the village; police entered the village with bulldozers. A villager narrated the story: "Rejecting her appeals, the police started demolishing a woman's house. When she protested, other women came forward and physically resisted the demolition. Then the male folk, who were outside the village, rushed in. Police started firing pellets and rubber bullets, and teargas shells. When Laxmana Jamuda, 60, was trying to flee, he was hit by a pellet on the back. He was killed. This was murder."