While awaiting forest rights in the contentious Burhanpur region, tribals suffer unlawful arrests and police atrocities 

Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh: Nanya (11) stared at the front door of his house that whole night. His father Rai Singh Barela (40) and mother Jyoti Bai (35) were not at home. Along with 30 other Barela tribals, they had left for the Renuka Range Office located 25 km from their village, Gwarkheda in Burhanpur district, around 4 pm on March 2, 2023. 
 
That night, only two elderly women, one elderly man, a young woman and about two dozen children were present in Gwarkheda. When his parents did not return even after 11 pm, Nanya went out to enquire with those few people left in the village. He came to know that no one had returned. He did not know that no one would return soon.
 
A dejected Nanya returned home, gave some water to his two sisters and put them to sleep. His younger sister Aashya (6) was suffering from a high fever, but there was neither medicine nor food at home.
 
The mass movement towards the range office was the result of the fracas between tribals and the forest department. While tribals demand their rights on forest land, the department is against the tribals cultivating that land. The forest department had destroyed the crops cultivated by Santram Remla, Panchya Barela, Bana Bai and Banjari Bai, besides taking them into custody for illegal cultivation.
 
On reaching the range office, the 32-member group began to hear screams of the arrested women behind the closed doors. Apprehending mistreatment, they barged into the office only to find “forest personnel drunk and beating up the women mercilessly as they refused to dance as instructed”.  
 
Enraged villagers did not think twice before freeing all four from the range office and started leaving for the village. Around 8.30 pm, while returning home, policemen from Lalbagh, Ganpati and Shikarpura stations took the tribals, including 15 women, into custody.  
 
More problems follow
 
According to the villagers, the police kept five men each in different police stations, some women in the police station and some women in the range office. An FIR was registered against them at Lalbagh Police Station around 1.30 am on March 3, 2023.
 
Various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) such as Section 353 (assault to prevent a government servant from discharging his duty), Section 332 (voluntarily causing hurt to deter a public servant from discharging his duty), Section 147 (unlawful assembly of a crowd), Section 148 (rioting while armed with deadly weapon), 149 (joining unlawful assembly), Section 427 (mischief causing damages), Section 458 (lurking house-trespass), Section 225 (resisting or obstructing the lawful arrest of another person) were charged against them. Most of these sections are non-bailable and could lead to imprisonment ranging from two to 14 years, if found guilty. All the arrested persons were shifted to Khandwa jail in the evening of March 3.
 
Under Section 4(5) of the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006, no member of a forest-dwelling Scheduled Tribe or other traditional forest dweller shall be evicted or removed from forest land under his occupation till the recognition and verification procedure is complete. “The entire arrest was illegal. First, the crops of tribals were destroyed by saying that they were on the forest department’s land. Later, the owners of that land were arrested while their applications under the FRA were pending, which itself is unconstitutional,” Madhuri Krishnaswami of Jagrit Adivasi Dalit Sangathan (JADS) told 101Reporters. JADS has been working for the welfare of tribals in Burhanpur and nearby districts for over a decade.
 
Claiming that women were arrested after 5 pm, and kept in the range office and beaten, Krishnaswami noted that the range office was not a statutory detention centre. “It is illegal to keep anyone in custody there. Women were illegally confined there the whole night and treated indecently.”
 
The villagers were not able to access legal aid from the government. When they went to Burhanpur to meet the lawyers, advocates Ubed Shaikh and Shoaib Qadri offered to fight their case without any fees after learning about their financial condition.
 
“The forest department does not have the right to arrest and keep anyone in their office. They also lodged false cases against them," Advocate Qadri told 101Reporters. He added that the police failed to present the chargesheet within 60 days, due to which the villagers got default bail from the court on May 13, 2023, after about 70 days of imprisonment.
 
A few weeks later, police presented the chargesheet, but the trial has not begun yet. Twice, a date was fixed for presenting the witnesses, but they did not turn up.
 
Regarding punishment, both lawyers said that the case was fake and the police did not have suitable witnesses and evidence, hence the villagers will not get punishment. “However, the case will drag on for a long time,” they said.
 
FRA of no help?
 
The tribals have been arguing that they are eligible to do farming under the Scheduled Tribes And Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 and have filed applications for lease approval under the Act, but they are pending with the forest department. However, the forest staff has been alleging that the tribals damage forest plantations with the intention of encroaching upon them.
 
Earlier, on September 23, 2022, the then deputy ranger and forest staff demolished a house built under the PM Awas Yojana. Maize and sesame crops were destroyed. A bike belonging to a villager was also taken away. The villagers complained to the Collector, Burhanpur SP and the district forest officer, but without any result. 
 
Madhya Pradesh, which has the highest tribal population in the country, has received 5.79 lakh applications under the FRA, out of which only about two lakh were considered eligible. 
 
In 2019, when the Supreme Court ordered the removal of ineligible people from the forest, the then Kamal Nath government filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court, citing errors in the earlier process and seeking time to reevaluate the rejected applications. Soon after, the government launched the Van Mitra app for digital verification of documents. The Union Tribal Ministry told the Parliament in January 2023 that, until November 30, 2022, 6.27 lakh applications were received in Madhya Pradesh, out of which only 2.94 lakh were considered eligible and the rest were either under consideration or rejected.
 
First-hand experiences
 
Meera Bai (25), one of the arrested women, narrated her experience at the range office. “The drunk forest workers asked me to dance, so I started dancing. I had no other way out. I was scared.”
 
She thought she would be released if she did what they told her. “After two-three hours, I got tired and told them that I could not dance anymore. The forest personnel posted in the range office beat me badly. When I started screaming in pain, they gave me a pill [painkiller] and told me to dance again. When I refused, they started thrashing me again."
 
She added that the tribals were forced to clean toilets when in jail. “I had to tear a part of my own saree on the first day of my period. The next day, some people from the neighbouring village, Thathar, came to meet us, so we asked them to go to the village and bring clothes from our houses. They brought our clothes the next day.”
 
However, Khandwa Jail Superintendent Aditi Chaturvedi rejected the allegation and said that all female prisoners have access to sanitary napkins.
 
Banjari Bai (50), who was among the first four persons taken in custody, shows the injury marks on her leg. “The forest staff hit us with sticks.” Bana Bai (40) said that they used to pull earrings, causing ear injuries. “The police beat us and rendered us deaf. I still have hearing loss," Santram Remala (40) added.
 
Bati Bai (40) said that women were lodged in a separate room in the range office. “At night, the people of the range office first cooked a chicken and then asked me to dance. I got tired and as soon as I stopped to rest, one of them hit me with a stick on my arm, which bounced back and hit my head. I fell unconscious for several hours. When I regained consciousness, I had a severe headache,” she detailed. 
Advocate Qadri further said that the range officers would come to the villages and demand chicken meat from the women. If they refuse, they are beaten up.
 
“Beating up a person and making them dance are violations of human rights. The modesty of women is also violated. When our case reaches the honourable court, we will bring these facts to light,” Qadri said.  
 
When asked about this incident, District Forest Officer Vijay Singh told 101Reporters that their action was as per the rules under The Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 and FRA, 2006. “We work for forest conservation. But these are encroaching people and can go to any extent in greed for land."  
 
While mentioning that he was posted elsewhere when this incident took place, Singh alleged that the villagers “put the women in front and the women themselves tear their clothes” to raise allegations.
 
Burhanpur SP Devendra Patidar, however, refused to comment, saying that he was posted elsewhere at that time.
 
Male prisoners were equally affected. They were stacked into a small barrack and forced to sleep on one side, leading to body pain. Even old prisoners used to beat him in jail. Sometimes, food would run out or there would be less food.
 
In response, the jail superintendent said that the capacity of Khandwa jail is 200 male prisoners, whereas at that time, there were around 900 prisoners. 

As the case continues in court, life in Gwarkheda has slowly returned to its routine, though uncertainty still lingers. The arrested villagers are back home, working their fields and waiting for the legal process to conclude. 

(Rishav Raj Singh is a freelance journalist and a member of 101Reporters, a pan-India network of grassroots reporters.) 

This story has been produced by 101Reporters, an independent news agency with a network of 3,000+ freelance journalists across the country, in collaboration with Crime & Punishment, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy.