Police action in Kandhmal - 13 Oct 2008

By Maxwell Pereira

Kandhmal is a failure on many fronts. But from basic policing point of view, the performance of Orissa Police is reminiscent of wanton police inaction as happened in the Nov-84 Sikh riots, as also the government sponsored connivance or tacit collusion in the 1992 Gujarat riots and the 1993 Mumbai riots. Despite worldwide condemnation of police handling of these events considered indelible blots on the nation’s history, and repeated indictments at the hands of various Commissions too, the Indian police it appears has not learnt its lesson. Why so?

Talking of basics, at the outset of violence the focus should have been on strict action against those indulging and spreading violence without waiting for political direction. There needed to have been adequate mobilisation of force, and visits by senior officers to the affected areas, their continued presence there for warranted action, and camping in the theatre of violence till normalcy was restored.

Instead, what was the immediate response of the Orissa police, and how did the police leadership react? They suspended SP Kandhmal - the one man who was known to have controlled the area for the past seven months with an iron hand. While the SP was suspended, the DM who with the SP had constituted an effective team was transferred out. The sinister designs behind this move are now surfacing, but for reasons not known are being suppressed from public knowledge.

On Christmas Day December 2007 gangs of fanatical elements in Kandhmal District had attacked churches and Christian institutions, desecrating statues and Bibles, and burning houses in Christian bastis in a series of pre-meditated and well organised assaults. In the atrocities that continued for a month, 107 churches were destroyed in arson, at least six people died and thousands were rendered homeless. The victims, practically all tribal or dalit Christians, very poor, and exploited. The declared perpetrators, none other than local Bajrang Dal units, the militant wing of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad under the umbrella of the total Sangh Parivar; pursuant to Swami Laxmanananda’s declared agenda of wiping out Christians off the face of Orissa.

Following widespread outrage from all quarters national and international over this carnage, the state government - whose benevolent protective hand over the rabid communal forces was evidently and eminently seen - reacted by suspending the Kandhmal Superintendent of Police, replacing him with young Nikhil Kanodia – a 2003 entrant into the IPS, who had already made a name for himself for controlling with an iron hand another local district infested with Hindu-Muslim communal tension. Kanodia was overnight summoned to State Headquarters to be told he has been specially selected, and sent to Kandhmal to restructure and rejuvenate effective policing in the riot-ridden District. The State govt simultaneously ordered a judicial commission to look into the causes and effects of the Kandhmal riots.

The activities of Laxmanananda in the area, inciting disharmony and communal disturbances in the Kandhmal district over the past many years, had led the Orissa police to open and maintain a police file on him which has grown fat over the years with accounts of riots caused or triggered off by him. Strangely, his activities were not checked by the police even after the December carnage. Instead, he was provided police protection – ostensibly after receiving written threats on his life from local Maoists whose displeasure he had also incurred.

Despite the police protection Laxmanananda and other adult members of his ashram were murdered on August 23. The attackers identified themselves as Naxalites and left a letter at the scene of murder claiming responsibility and stating why they murdered the Swami. On the basis of evidence of AK-47 used in the attack and the letter left behind, Kanodia briefed the media on Aug-24 that Maoist hand was indicated in the Swami’s murder – which position was soon after endorsed and reiterated by the Police Headquarters too in briefings at the State level.

This however did not, it appears, suit the Sangh Parivar in their designs and ultimate objective of targeting Christians. Praveen Togadia, the virulent head of the Bajrang Dal visited Orissa the next day and declared it was Christians not Maoists who killed the Swami. As if in support of his line, the BJD led State government of Naveen Patnaik deemed it fit to place under suspension its specially selected SP Kandhmal Kanodia, and removed him from the scene asking him to report to the Lines in Police Headquarter at Cuttack. What more, no replacement is posted in Kanodia’s place in Kandhmal over the next four days, leaving open the arena for the perpetrators and marauders to act with impunity with a free hand.

Not only was the one man who had kept the communal forces under check over the past seven months ignominiously suspended, he was also conveniently removed from the scene to ensure a clear ground for Bajrang Dal goons to unleash their violence with no State intervention at all to be witness to or enforce law.

If this is not criminal connivance, what else is? And yet the Doon School educated and hitherto socially respected Naveen Patnaik denies inaction and blatantly claims innocence stating “Every bone in my body is secular….” This, even while his government is openly attempting now to deflect the blame from the Dal resting it solely on the Swami’s students?

The Orissa police, particularly the police leadership, has failed miserably too – by succumbing to political dictates and not enforcing the rule of law as it should be. If India’s secular fabric is to be preserved and protected, communal violence needs the strong arm of the law, which only an unbiased and independent police establishment can ensure. There has never been more real a need for the police reforms that continue to elude this nation.

**published in The Times of India, 21 Oct 2008 under the title: Missing In Action

© Maxwell Pereira: Emai: mfjpkamath@gmail.com;

web: www.maxwellpereira.com; www.theothersideofpolicing.com