How Chhattisgarh Has Stalled A Historic Judgment

Context: The Salwa Judum judgment was delivered 10 years ago, but nothing has been done to implement it.

Salwa Judum judgment: It banned Salwa Judum, a vigilante movement started in 2005 and sponsored by Chhattisgarh and the Central government to fight against Maoists.

• Use of surrendered Maoists and untrained villagers as Special Police Officers (SPOs) was unconstitutional. Existing SPOs to be redeployed in traffic management or other such safe duties.
• State asked to submit a comprehensive plan for the prosecution of security forces and others involved in human rights violations and rehabilitation of villagers who had suffered violence.

Poor status of implementation of judicial directives

• State government merely renamed SPOs: Now known as District Reserve Guard (DRG).
• Inadequate training: 
• Most captured or surrendered Maoists are given automatic weaponry as soon as they join the police force.
• Some of them get one to three months of training, and some not even that.
• Occupational bias: They suffer the most casualties in any operation and are paid much less than the regular constabulary.
• Committing excesses of human rights violations: They commit most excesses against their former fellow villagers; Hundreds of people were killed, and their deaths were not even recorded as ‘encounters’.

Positive changes in tribal areas:

• Demands of development: There has been a rising demand for schools and health centres, and the new generation of villagers demand development.
• Overpowering of CRPF camps: These have come up at intervals of less than 5 km, and roads are being bulldozed through what were once dense forests.
• Towards justice: Residents of Tadmetla, Timapuram and Morpalli, whose villages were burnt by security forces in 2011, travelled hundreds of kilometres to give evidence before the Central Bureau of Investigation, which found in their favour, and filed a charge sheet against some SPOs.
• National Human Rights Commission castigated the government for violations in village Kondasawli.

Continuing challenges:

• Violent political retaliation:  Mahendra Karma, the Adivasi face of a violent movement jointly run by the BJP and Congress, was killed by the Maoists in 2013.
• Extrajudicial killings of villagers and Maoists and killings of suspected informers by Maoists continue at a steady pace. 
• State inaction: Despite all these legal developments and injustices, no steps have been taken by government or security forces to prosecute those responsibly.

Conclusion: Unless both sides get serious about peace talks, the 2011 Supreme Court judgment will be rendered even more meaningless, as will the idea of justice or the rule of law.