Is there any hope for Soni Sori?
By Betwa Sharma
Two years in jail without bail, two years without any investigation into allegations of being sexually tortured, two years of your family being steadily destroyed. A look at what happens if you’re educated, independent and Adivasi in central India.
Two years ago on October 4, 2011, Soni Sori was arrested in Delhi on suspicions of being a Maoist operating in Dantewada district, Chhattisgarh. The Adivasi woman had been on the run from the local police.
But instead of fading into just another statistic in India’s vast prison labyrinth, Sori’s saga, beginning with her dramatic flight from the tribal belt, captured headlines and the public imagination. Was this woman a dangerous Maoist who, as the police claimed, had attacked police personnel, attempted to blow up and torch trucks, and acted as a conduit for passage of protection money from a steel company operating in the area? Or was she, as activists claimed, an educated woman who was being silenced for her protests against injustice in the conflict-hit region?
The outspoken Adivasi woman acquired an air of mystery as her story spread in India and abroad. Was she a victim persecuted by the state machinery or had this strong and resourceful schoolteacher played both sides to survive in a conflict?
And was her nephew, Lingaram Kodopi, accused of channelling protection money to the Maoists, also being framed because the budding journalist was reporting on human rights violations allegedly committed by security forces in the tribal villages?
Their tumultuous stories suddenly offered a glimpse into the perils faced by Adivasis caught between the Indian security forces and Maoists. And if Sori and Kodopi were framed, then their predicament also raised concerns about how many more Adivasis had been slapped with false charges and scuttled into the oblivion of jail cells.
But instead of fading into just another statistic in India’s vast prison labyrinth, Sori’s saga, beginning with her dramatic flight from the tribal belt, captured headlines and the public imagination. Was this woman a dangerous Maoist who, as the police claimed, had attacked police personnel, attempted to blow up and torch trucks, and acted as a conduit for passage of protection money from a steel company operating in the area? Or was she, as activists claimed, an educated woman who was being silenced for her protests against injustice in the conflict-hit region?
The outspoken Adivasi woman acquired an air of mystery as her story spread in India and abroad. Was she a victim persecuted by the state machinery or had this strong and resourceful schoolteacher played both sides to survive in a conflict?
And was her nephew, Lingaram Kodopi, accused of channelling protection money to the Maoists, also being framed because the budding journalist was reporting on human rights violations allegedly committed by security forces in the tribal villages?
Their tumultuous stories suddenly offered a glimpse into the perils faced by Adivasis caught between the Indian security forces and Maoists. And if Sori and Kodopi were framed, then their predicament also raised concerns about how many more Adivasis had been slapped with false charges and scuttled into the oblivion of jail cells.
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