Immediate Removal of IGP  Kalluri, Chhattisgarh

IG Kalluri has repeatedly harassed activists such as members of the Jagdalpur Legal Aid Group, and is running a propaganda campaign branding anyone who seeks to defend adivasis in Bastar as “Maoist sympathisers”.Bela Bhatia was recently instrumental in bringing to light before the NHRC incidents of sexual assault of women in Bijapur. She assisted women in the villages of Chinnagelur, Peddagelur, Gundam, Burgicheru and Pegdapalli to file FIRs against police personnel. The NHRC took suo moto cognizance of newspaper reports and visited the area, which has resulted in an interim order by the Commission, issuing notice to the Chhattisgarh government on the basis of prima facie evidence of sexual assault.Ms. Bhatia is being targeted because of her exemplary work among adivasis in Bastar. IG Kalluri has recently expressed that he is going to go after “White&dashCollar Naxalites”, by which he is referred to activists in the area. IG Kalluri’s contempt for rule of law in Bastar is amply clear, and it is evident that he will resort to any violent means to ensure that the voices of Adivasis is not amplified in this struggle. We condemn the actions of the IG Kalluri, and call upon the Chhattisgarh government to take strict action against such acts of violence encouraged by the police in Bastar.




Eralier he attacked Nandini Sundar and others is precisely because of the findings of the CBI into the Tadmetla incident that it submitted last month. CBI filed chargesheets before the Special CBI Court, Raipur which has completely demolished the police’s story that Naxalites burnt the villages .Tthe burning of the effigies of activists and a journalist by the Chhatissgarh Auxiliary police force across Bastar in a widely publicised ‘offical protest on 24th October. This show of strength by state forces against civilians was the latest and most brazen example of the patronage extended by the government and its systematic fostering of a Police Raj in Bastar. All the public figures whose effigies were burnt‐ Manish Kunjam, Nandini Sundar, Himanhsu Kumar, Soni Sori, Bela Bhatia and Malini Subramaniam‐ are members of civil society who have faced violence and intimidation earlier as well for exposing and resisting the ongoing war against the adivasis in Bastar.


The Chattisgarh Police has summarily dismissed the CBI findings, offering a lameduck defense about the burning down of the village being accidentally caused by heat generated by crossfire during an operation against the Maoists&excl Despite the CBI having found prima facie evidence of their complicty in the massacre, arson and loot, rape and physical assaults, in an act of brutal assault on our own people, the Police are now claiming themselves to be nationalists who are being maligned, while all others resisting them are ‘anti nationals’. What stares us in the face in these recent shows of police strength, is not just the impunity allowed to the forces, but how RSS‐BJP Governments at Centre and the State have unleashed an all out war against Bastar citizenry ,part of which is to squelch public spirited intiatives by groups and persons, who are the voice of those people on the ground whose voices do not reach us. In the operations in the forest villages of Bastar its not the Maoists the security forces fight. They wage war on civilians, terrorising them as is well known, through fake surrenders, fake encounters, atrocities committed on Adivasi women, children and men. More than three thousand Adivasis, falsely accused under "naxal offence" languish in overcrowded and dingy jails.


Detentions and arrests are means to ruin Adivasis though court battles and incarceration. In the process stifling Adivasi resistance to land and forest take over by public and private corporate interests, even as the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution remains in abeyance.

On the other side, its a struggle to get FIRs registered, eg in the Nendra rape case, for investigations to be completed, for truthful and fair investigation to take place, and through it all there has been a relentless attack on social and political activists, lawyers, journalists and others.

So the effigy burning is not just the government and the forces’ contempt for the Constitutional Order‐ it was under threat for a long time ‐ but also draws attention yet again to the dirty nature of the all out war the Indian State is waging against some of the most oppressed sections of its own people. Here we are witnessing a defense of the Police’s ‘right’ to commit all crimes and atrocities, versus those who bring out the abuse and violence against civilians showing the war against the Maoists in its true colours, and who affirm the Adivasis’ right to their resources, the forests, waters and land, and protest and resist their takeover. The riotous mob gathered at various places in Bastar, comprising police personnel and vigilantes nurtured by the Police themselves, showed their ‘nationalism’ to be one that not only allows massacre, rape, plunder, arson, terrorisation of fellow Indians, but also denies their rights to legal remedies and justice. Whereas loyalty towards people’s rights and causes is made a mark of the allegedly ‘anti‐national’ character of the dissidence and the resistance

We the undersigned demand immediate removal of IGP Bastar Division, Kullari in Chhattisgarh for ordering police action in the three villages which the CBi has found the police guilty after five years' investigation and also instigating street action by the Auxilliary force under CG Police of organizing rallies and burning effigies. Action be against all those participating inthe protest of effiigy burning of activists and journalists .We also demand a speedy conclusion of the pending inquiry into rapes and murders at Tarmetla.

It is to be noted that even during his earlier posting as SSP Dantewada, between 2010‐11, Mr. SRP Kalluri created a reign of terror in the area when human rights activists like Swami Agnivesh, Medha Patkar were attacked, journalists were driven out of the region and CPI representatives were arrested on false charges. It was during his term that in March 2011, hundreds of homes and granaries were burnt down, women were raped and three men were killed in 3 villages namely, Tadmetla, Morpalli and Timapuram of Dantewada district by security forces and SPOs. Additionally, Swami Agnivesh and some other volunteers were attacked by the SPOs who were enroute to these 3 villages to distribute relief materials after getting prior permission from the District Collector. Immediately after the incident, Sundar and other petitioners in the on‐going Salwa Judum case, brought this incident to the attention of the Supreme Court. In July 2011, by the same order where Supreme Court outlawed Salwa Judum, it also directed the CBI to investigate the allegations of crimes that took place in the 3 villages as well as the attack on Swami Agnivesh. SRP Kalluri being the SSP under whose directions the operation in these villages was conducted was transferred out of Bastar to ensure independence of inquiry into the matter.