A black spot just below Channu Karam’s left shoulder marks the spot where a CRPF bullet hit him in 2013. Pieces of it are still inside, blocking their hand movement, he says.
Karam, now in his early 60s, was one of 30 people who gathered at Edesmetta village in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur district eight years ago to celebrate the annual Beej Pandam festival on the night of May 17-18. The celebration ended tragically when security personnel killed eight people, including four minors, and injured five, including Karam. Two of those five have died.
The details of the night – also set out in a judicial inquiry report that places the blame on “panic” CRPF personnel – are embedded in the collective memory of the village. Residents say this has created an insurmountable divide between them and the state.
At that time, Somalu Punem, now 23 years old, accompanied his father and brother to the festival, where people worship the new life in the form of a seed during the night. After the ritual was completed, he went to a nearby well along with his brother Lakhu and his cousins Sonu and Sukku. They did not know it then, but in an empty field surrounded by forested hills, more than a thousand security personnel had gathered to destroy a “Maoist camp”.
“While we were returning, we were caught by some security personnel, who were talking in Hindi. We didn’t understand what they were saying so we started running,” said Poonam. “That’s when the shooting started.”
According to the report of Justice VK Agrawal, retired judge of the Madhya Pradesh High Court, the slain tribals were unarmed and were killed in 44 rounds of bullets, of which 18 were fired by a constable from the CoBRA unit of the CRPF.
Punem was shot in the side. That night he lost his brother. “His body was dismembered. We had to collect the body parts in a gamchha,” he said.
The village priest, or Gayata, Pandu Karam, who was leading the ritual, stepped forward in an effort to stop the firing. He was also shot along with his 10-year-old son Guddu.
The tribal residents of Edesmeta are demanding compensation and action against those responsible, as they have done all these years.
Moolwasi Bachao Manch, a group led by the tribals of Bijapur, organized a two-day event in Edesmetta in the first week of October, in memory of the deceased of Edesmetta and Sarkeguda, where it was held during the same festival in 2012. Such an incident had happened.
The CBI is conducting its own investigation into the Adesmeta incident following a Supreme Court order in May 2019.
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