The unravelling mystery of Abujhmaad

Early this year the Indian government decided to venture into Abujhmaad, a remote territory in the state of Chhattisgarh, which until recently had remained out of its reach because of mythical 12-headed monsters, dense forests, harsh terrain and the presence of marauding gangs of leftist guerrillas — commonly referred to as the Maoists — who have killed hundreds in their war against the republic. Armed with Swedish Carl Gustav rockets, under-barrel grenade launchers, night-vision equipment and satellite phones, 3,000 CRPF (Central Reserve Police Force) paramilitary troops and policemen marched into Abujhmaad, a 6,000-square-kilometre area that has captured the people’s imagination for centuries.

This exercise, in March, was billed as one of the most ambitious operations carried out by the security forces, and the objective was clear — to reclaim the land where the writ of the Indian state ceased to exist and to invade what India’s home secretary once described as the country’s only “liberated zone”. The only glitch was that the troops had no idea what to expect inside Abujhmaad, or “the unknown hills”. Their only guide was a British-era map and a few satellite images. This area, bigger than Dubai, was never mapped in revenue and forest records. Moreover, Abujhmaad, also larger than the state of Goa, has no electricity, phone signals, health centres or police presence. The last known attempt to venture into Abujhmaad was made by 16th-century Mogul emperor Akbar, who wanted to tap the rich forest produce. There are few historical records of this adventure and it is understood that Akbar gave up after his soldiers failed to penetrate the dense forests.

This time around, after scouting the mountains and villages, the troops emerged two weeks later and were greeted with screaming newspaper headlines: “Citadel breached”, “In a first, CRPF enters the land of Maoists, myths”. Top police officers hailed the operation as a huge psychological victory for the security forces. “Some say animals with 12 heads are found in Abujhmaad, some narrate other mythical stories. Then there is the Maoist presence. It was primarily an attempt to understand and discover the region,” CRPF officer Pankaj Kumar Singh told the newspaper Indian Express in April. Except a few minor clashes with Maoist rebels, officials said, the operation was largely a reconnaissance exercise. “It was a great education, going into the area where no security forces have ever been. We wanted to explore and break the myth of Maad. It’s just 15 per cent of the region we covered,” Singh added. In terms of strategic gains, the troops announced the arrest of about a dozen suspected rebels.

The Maoists have killed hundreds of civilians, government employees and security forces in Abujhmaad in the past few years and are part of a decades-old Naxal movement termed the “biggest internal security threat” to India by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The movement is mainly active in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Bihar and Jharkhand. But in recent years, the Maoists have claimed the most lives in Chhattisgarh and the security forces believe that inaccessible jungles such as those of Abujhmaad are rebel hotspots.

They say Abujhmaad is the citadel of the Maoists who, in the absence of government machinery, rule over poor, illiterate tribals living inside these forests for centuries. In recent years, Maoists have launched audacious attacks and ruthlessly killed hundreds in the Bastar region, where Abujhmaad is located. In 2010, the rebels killed 76 CRPF troops in a guerrilla-style ambush. The killings, described as the worst in years, shocked the government. “I am deeply shocked at the loss of lives ... This shows the savage nature of the Maoists and the brutality and the savagery they are capable of,” Home Minister P. Chidambaram said.

The rebels have also abducted senior government officials. Most recently, they kidnapped a young district magistrate after killing his two security guards. After most attacks — killings and kidnappings — the Maoists have disappeared into the thick forests. Despite the huge losses, the security forces have failed to gain the sympathy of people and social activists. They have been accused of human rights violations in tribal villages and custodial killings of suspected Maoist rebels.

The Abujhmaad exercise, dubbed Operation Hakka, made national headlines but failed to effectively demystify the zone as the troops covered only 15 per cent of the massive territory. Just as the exercise ended, the Maoists accused the security forces of torturing the Gonds, the Maadias and other tribals during the operation. These accusations were promptly dismissed by officials, and denials were prominently reported by the Indian media, which rarely questions the official line on issues of national security.

To fully understand this “gravest threat” to India’s security, one needs to understand the dynamics of four complex entities whose actions, or inaction, sum up the story of the Naxal movement in India. They are the hapless tribals who have suffered at the hands of both Maoists and security forces; the government that eyes forests as a source of revenue and treats tribals as cheap labour; the troops who have lost lives and limbs in their war against the Maoists but have also committed unspeakable atrocities on the tribals; and the Maoists, the propagators of extreme-left ideology and perpetrators of the worst form of violence on tribals, other civilians and security forces.

Tribals make up about 70 per cent of the Bastar region’s population and their lives largely depend on the forests. They lead a simple yet joyous life, with their own forms of music and dance. Home to these tribals, the jungles of Chhattisgarh are also an excellent source of revenue for the government, which sells teak and other precious forest produce to the rich in cities. To penetrate deep inside these forests, government builds a network of access roads and hires tribals to perform labour-intensive tasks such as cutting teak and construction. This job is actually carried out by private contractors under the supervision of low-level, underpaid and corrupt government staff. Tribals are exploited by contractors, who bribe the government staff to look the other way. Here, Maoists step in and offer protection, often unsolicited, to tribals from the contractors and government staff. This is where the conflict begins. The tribals get caught between the nexus of private contractors and corrupt government staff on one side and the Maoists on the other. They are forced to join the Maoists or become police informers, or silently suffer exploitation by contractors. Every way, tribals suffer. In most parts of Chhattisgarh and other Naxal-affected states, what typically follows is a vicious cycle of violence, exploitation and misery that is not entirely visible to the outside world. The government watches from the sidelines as its corrupt employees, the private contractors and the Maoists exploit tribals in their own ways.

Tribals living in Abujhmaad were largely spared of this exploitation because the government staff and security forces stayed away. The remoteness of the region, difficult terrain and Maoist presence kept them out. The security forces may have breached this rebel stronghold with Operation Hakka but they failed to elucidate they mystery of Abujhmaad or win hearts and minds of the inhabitants of these jungles. It was largely a security drill. Newspaper accounts of this operation were based on official briefings, and the mainstream media failed to investigate further.

The big questions that need to be answered were: Why Abujhmaad remained out of bounds for the government machinery for so many decades after independence from the British? How many tribals live inside Abujhmaad and how do they sustain themselves? Is Abujhmaad a headquarters of the Maoists guerrillas and do they have factories to manufacture weapons as alleged by security forces? Do the Maoists run a parallel government in Abujhmaad?

Exactly a month after the March operation, Tehelka newsmagazine, known for its investigative reporting, sent two young journalists deep inside the jungles of Abujhmaad. Tusha Mittal and Tarun Sehrawat travelled on a motorbike and on foot to visit several villages of the “mythical citadel”. Unlike the paramilitary troops who were armed to the teeth and carried sophisticated equipment, all reporter Mittal and photographer Sehrawat had were a few water bottles, instant noodles, biscuits and a Nikon camera. The night before they entered forests, their local contact handed them a bottle of a drink to “numb the pain”. Mittal and Sehrawat were on a risky assignment that few mainstream journalists dared to do.

The two returned after spending a week, and a full account of their trip, along with some stunning pictures, was published in the magazine’s May 12 issue. The story written by Mittal and photographs taken by Sehrawat are a gripping and true depiction of the tribals living in abject poverty with no access to health care or education, and with little sense of the outside world. More shockingly, the Tehelka journalists found that Abujhmaad is an open-air prison for tribals, who don’t venture out due to the fear of both Maoists and security forces. Any tribal who comes out of the jungles and gets in touch with people of the urban areas is branded a government spy and killed by Maoists. And if they are suspected of being Maoist sympathisers, tribals are arrested, tortured and implicated in false cases by the security forces.

While it is hard to fully comprehend the gains made during Operation Hakka (“hunt for wild animals” in Maad dialect), Tehelka’s account painted a disturbing picture of the troops’ high-handedness. Villagers interviewed by Mittal and Sehrawat recounted liberal use of machineguns and mortar fire by troops aided by helicopters. In a statement sent to the media, the Maoists accused the troops of looting and burning homes of tribals and killing at least one of them. The tribals corroborated the Maoists’ allegations against the security forces. While most newspapers relied on official account of Operation Hakka and some published statements sent out by rebels, almost all of them failed to speak to the tribals. The Tehelka story, which was one of the few credible accounts, not only exposed the state’s high-handedness but also the brutal suppression of the tribals by the leftist rebels whose movement’s objective is, ironically, to protect the poor from the “oppressive state”. What is equally shocking is the Maoists’ audacity to declare Abujhmaad a no-go land for security forces. “Go back Indian troops,” warned a message on a large iron gate as the Tehelka duo rode through “lime green forests” and village huts made of bamboos and leaves. More such messages warned the tribals to stay clear of landmines, booby-trapped streams and dirt tracks.

For those not familiar with inner workings of the Maoists, Mittal and Sehrawat decoded the complex hierarchy of their village-level committees that look after seven different departments — economic, military and security, justice and law, farming, health, public relations, and culture — in Abujhmaad’s villages. They found it is impossible to distinguish between ordinary tribals and Naxal ideologues who control every aspect of the village life. The Maoists run a parallel government and any challenge to their rule is dealt with ruthlessly.

The tribals don’t dare to venture out of Abujhmaad even for medical treatment. The journalists met a youth who was shot by troops during Operation Hakka. A month after the operation, he was still limping with the bullet lodged in his leg. The youth knew that a visit to the city for treatment may invite death sentence by the rebels.

Tehelka’s fascinating story demolishes myths, one of which is the widely believed theory that Abujhmaad is an impregnable Maoists fortress. It underscores the fact that the failure of the Indian government to reach out to the inhabitants led to the expansion of Naxal network. Today, Naxals rule Abujhmaad, and the lives of tribals are unlikely to change for the better in the coming years unless the government comes up with a political plan to bring these communities into its fold.

Weeks after Tehelka published it on the cover, the Abujhmaad story took a dramatic and cruel twist. It turned out that Mittal and Sehrawat had returned not just with a gripping story but also deadly viruses in their bodies. Both Mittal and Sehrawat fell ill soon after the trip. While Mittal continued to battle serious infections, Sehrawat died of multiple-organ failure on June 15 after spending weeks in hospital. He had been diagnosed with cerebral malaria, jaundice and typhoid. He was just 23 and from a working-class family. The journalist’s tragic death sent shock waves in the fraternity and the magazine management’s role came under scrutiny. “Foolhardiness is not acceptable when you are reporting from a region like Chhattisgarh. No first-hand account is more important than life”, twitted senior journalist Rahul Pandita, author of “Hello Bastar”, a bestseller on the Maoist movement. “There is no glory in dying in a Sal forest.”

Some journalists pointed out that the two journalists were ill-prepared for the assignment and did not have anti-malaria medicines or even chlorine tablets. “Tarun and Tusha were not scatterbrained tourists — they were meticulous professionals who frequently worked together and took great care over the stories they produced. They weren’t foolhardy adventurers either; the thought that they could contract a fatal illness simply didn’t occur to them or, it seems, their editors,” wrote Aman Sethi in the newspaper The Hindu. “India’s journalists tend to nurse a healthy disregard for institutionalised frameworks, arguing that it is impossible to take all risks into account. But a few basic measures could help eliminate entirely predictable and avoidable tragedies like the one that claimed Tarun.”

In a tribute to his fallen colleague, Tehelka editor Tarun Tejpal wrote: “Who Tarun was is of no real consequence to anyone, bar his family, friends and colleagues. Good-looking, vigorous, gentle, ever-smiling, shy, helpful, hardworking, dauntless, a fine son, a finer brother, just 23 — all these are for the intimates to roll on their tongues and wet with their tears. To the world at large, to the readers and the public interest that he served, what Tarun did is what matters. And why Tarun died is what matters.”

Hopefully, fellow journalists will keep the Abujhmaad story alive.