Since June-July 2014, reports have been filtering in regarding the intensification of Operation Green Hunt in the forest villages of Bijapur district of Chhattisgarh. Civil rights organizations have been receiving requests to send teams in order to investigate what was happening on the ground. To this end, PUDR conducted a fact-finding in the villages of Sarkeguda, Rajpeta,Kottaguda, Pusbaka, Basaguda, Lingagiri, Korsaguda, Kottagudem and Timmapur villages in Usur Tehsil of Bijapur District from 26th to 31st December 2014. The attempt was to document the principal concerns of the Adivasis and the reasons underlying these, by staying for a few days in the villages.

This report adds to the existing documentation on state repression that PUDR has been carrying out along with other civil rights organizations for over a decade in the Bastar region of Chhattisgarh. However, unlike previous fact-finding reports which were incident specific, such as the Sarkeguda killings of June 2012 by the CRPF, the scope of the present report allows for a larger understanding of how repression has percolated and utterly changed the lives of Adivasis. The information provided by the residents of the nine villages, the facts gathered and the observations made in the course of the fact-finding confirm the insecurities and hardships of daily life in the war-zone—the low key, but ever present forms of repression routinized by the state through its forces and security camps. The urgency of this report lies in the fact that there is a very real need to intervene and prevent the security camps from assuming a permanent character in the villages of Bijapur.

The Hindi Verson of this report is also available.

keywords: Adivasi, absconder, Adivasis, arrests, beaten, Begar,  Bijapur District, cases, checkposts, Chhattisgarh, CoBra, CRPF, dead, environment, false cases, Geneva Convention, harassment, High Committee, impunity, Integrated Action Plan IAP, Maoist, military, mining, Ministry of Tribal Affairs, molest, Naxalite, Nacal, Operation Green Hunt, OGH, permanent warrants, police, repression, roads, Rome Statute International Criminal  Code, Salwa Judum, security camps, security forces, SPOs, surrendered, torture, villagers, violations, violence, War Crimes