What Speaks Louder

It is not surprising that the rejoinder speaks of “factual inconsistencies”, and not inaccuracies. This is because the report had duly recorded official claims (reiterated in the rejoinder) that seven of the victims were Maoists, that six CRPF men had sustained injuries, that the CRPF was first fired upon, that a post-mortem was carried out on the bodies (the report mentioned a team of three doctors while the rejoinder claims the team comprised four) and that a contingent of the CRPF (two according to the rejoinder) reached Silger but found no Maoist camp there for them to bust.

CRPF: The site was part of a ‘liberated zone’, with no election, no census, no record, no information
Outlook: The village is just three kilometres from the CRPF camp at Basaguda. The students killed studied in the government school at Basaguda, lived in the hostel and were back for the summer vacation. The village also has an elected sarpanch and villagers commute regularly to Basaguda.

Police claim all 7 dead had ‘criminal records’ but not even one case went to court for trial though all of them were residing in the village.

CRPF: The encounter happened in the dead of the night
Outlook: As we reported, it was a moonlit night and the CRPF commandos carried night vision equipment.

CRPF: The forces were moving in a tactical manner
Outlook: It probably means the forces were not moving in a single file but were spread out in all directions, which would support the villagers’ claim they were surrounded from all sides and that the CRPF jawans could have been injured in firing by the troops themselves.

CRPF: The fire came towards the forces from different directions, and the firing continued for about an hour
Outlook: It is hard to believe that 30 villagers, a majority of them minors and most, if not all, unarmed, held 200 heavily armed CRPF commandos and troops at bay for an hour. Recovery of firearms, empty shells, position of the injured jawans and post-mortem of the dead and the injured would establish the truth.

CRPF: It is now firmly established that seven of the people killed had clear-cut criminal records pertaining to Naxal activities
Outlook: That would imply that the majority of those killed were in all probability innocent. In any case, the seven people killed, according to police records, were booked under sections 147 (rioting), 148 (rioting with deadly weapons), 149 (being part of an unlawful assembly) and 307 (shooting with intention to kill) of the ipc between 2000 and 2011.

CRPF: The contention that forces did not reach Silger too is also factually incorrect
Outlook: The report had stated that one of the contingents reached Silger but found nothing. The rejoinder now claims that two contingents reached Silger and, well, found nothing.

Villagers show ID proof of the dead. (Photograph by Yashwant Dhote)

CRPF: A board of four competent doctors conducted the post-mortem and gave their conclusions in the best possible manner they could
Outlook: The report had mentioned a team of three doctors—an orthopaedist, a paediatrist and a junior doctor—who carried out the post-mortem. The haste with which the post-mortem was conducted and the bodies cremated raised doubts that some could have been shot on the back and from close range.

CRPF: It is difficult to fathom how the report states that villagers were finalising details of an impending festival...specially when the sarpanch was away on an errand
Outlook: The failure of the administration to record the statements of the survivors and the injured even 17 days after the encounter would make it difficult for anyone to fathom what the villagers were doing. The Outlook report had quoted a survivor and the sarpanch making the claim.

The facts are the CRPF had specific intelligence of a camp at Silger. The movement of a “heavily armed Maoist dalam” was tracked for over two weeks, the operation planned for over 10 days. As many as 800 commandos and troops were mobilised. Two helicopters were used to air-lift some of them deep inside the forest. But the operation achieved nothing because the CRPF acknowledges no camp was found at Silger and the Maoists had moved away. If that isn’t a “story of an op lost”, what is?

Yashwant Dhote in Raipur