The state capital Bhubaneswar, a remote block, a distant block in Koraaput district of Odisha, about 450 km south of Bhubaneswar, leads you a series of hills leading to Narayanpatna. Traveling through your spine roads is a visual treatment-green slopes, gauze-climbing hills, and farm with greatly carved roofs that are glued to the hills. This is a landscape that attracts travelers to stop, calmly breathe and surprise their untouched beauty.
This cool front is a terrain marked with upheaval. Some people may make it better than Alii Bingodika, a 55 -year -old tribal woman from Dumsil’s small known village. Alibi’s daily routine is fixed with caution and fear. She rarely comes out of her village because she lives under the shadow of five criminal cases.
Her husband, Dibu Bingodika, is entangled in a legal trap with three cases against her. His two sons, Sisir and Kesab, returned home last month after spending three and five years in prison respectively.
In the last one year, 200 arrest warrants have been carried out in Narayanpatna, where the police station in -charge of the police station says Pramod Behera. He says that since the commencement of tribal agitation in 2006, 1,100 cases have been pending against villagers in this area. Some villagers have 50 cases against them up to 50 cases against them, and most of the villagers of Dumsil have been filed as per the first information report (FIR) as per the first information report (FIR) as the killers, traitors or rioters. After the Koraaput district court expressed displeasure over the backlog last year, senior police officers ordered a rapid settlement of all cases.
From the middle of the 1990s, the Kisan-Labber Group, who fought for tribal rights, started demanding that outdoor liquor vendors were taken down by non-trivious people as they were pioneers for addiction among the tribals. Soon, it gave rise to the demand for the land that came back from those who came from outside the area and started controlling it. It was an area under the fifth schedule of the Indian Constitution, which operates some land that occupies tribal people. Under this, these lands cannot be excluded from tribal control.
Narayanapatna is common in green slopes and neatly carved roof fields. Most villagers practice shifting farming. , Photo Credit: Biswanjan Route
Through years, people who work under the CMA are called Naxalites, with an alleged relationship with the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist). Since 2009, CMAs chairman Nalk Linga was labeled as an overground Maoist worker.
Many of the people associated with CMAs have surrendered to the police in the past. However, “The police forced many tribals-often falsely implicated-to surrender under various government schemes,” says, “The police forced many villagers representing several villagers in the court. He recalls the “peaceful, democratic movement” between 2006 and 2014, when tribals from Narayanapatna and Bandhgaon regions began to demand land rights and a rift over liquor trade. He said, “Surrender was widely promoted in newspapers and on television, CMAS members were depicted as Maoist supporters or militia who had imposed weapons. In fact, in truth, the members of the Sangh constantly collaborated with both the administration and the police.”
The current arrests come against the background of the Home Ministry’s rift on the extremists of the Ministry of Home Affairs, who along with Home Minister Amit Shah “to eradicate Naxalism before 31 March of March 2026”.
Villagers and police
In homes close to Bingodikas, similar stories. 25 -year -old Shanti Kendreka struggles for four young children as a mother and uncertainness around her husband Tisru’s arrest. He has now been in custody for four months. Shifting farming – the only source of their livelihood – barely provides sufficient for subsistence, allowing legal expenses alone.
34 -year -old Meena Hikka, another resident of Dumsil, returned home after spending eight years in prison, accused of rioting, treason and murder. His mother, 60 -year -old Dhirma Hikaka, whose three sons – Meena – were arrested, are worried. He has been told that cases are also pending against him. “I never thought that participating in meetings and participating in demonstrations would cause trouble for a lifetime,” she says. “All my sons have spent years in jail. Our family has tolerated unimaginable mental trauma. We continue to live under the shadow of arrest.” As she adds, her voice falls, “I have lost the power to close the legal dirt caught to my family.”
A decade later, the villagers do not yet have to separate themselves from legal dirt. Police claim that they have been carrying out the long pending warrants, arguing that the villagers are a result of participation in the violent rebellion which was once dominated in these hills.
A lawyer and human rights activist, Biswapriya Kanungo, however, “a cruel strategy tries to subdue the tribals who dared to challenge the system once”.
The Panigre, a lawyer, who fought for tribal rights, says that people were implicated. “In almost every case, the police wrongly listed several innocent tribals as absconding and filed chargesheets against them.
In 2009, Baria Buti, Blind, and then at the age of 47, was raised from Mankadzola village in Narayanpat on the charge of starting an attack on the Narayanpat police station at the age of 47. He spent two years in jail, the villagers said in front of the police that he could not be leftist extremists. Almost all the accused were acquitted in the 2009 police station cases. Buti was also there, but spent only two years in jail.
Sekru Sirikia, a resident of Tala Dekpadu village, 6 km from Narayanapatna police station, was arrested in 2014. He spent three years in prison in Koraaput as an undertrury. At that time there were eight criminal cases against his name. In a long legal battle, he was acquitted in all. Now he says that the police is looking for him in two more cases.
Narayanapatna movement
Narayanpatna is a region marked by land isolation. Land isolation in tribal context, when tribal people are separated from the land for whom they have generational relations. A book in Odia released on Narayanapatna land movement in June 2025, Ujani jhanzabati A worker, by Nigamanand Sadangi, blamed tribal rebellion on land, forest, bond and liquor issues for the history of injustice, oppression and exploitation.
“Two influential groups – Moneyelenders and liquor vendors – emerged in Narayanpatn and Bandhugown areas of Korput district. These groups were mainly formed from business communities from Andhra Pradesh and Odisha,” the book says.
These groups were initially involved in making alcohol and selling liquor, but they gradually expanded to the trade of forest produce, reserved by law for tribals. Over time, he introduced his dominance by offering loans and promoting dependence on alcohol among tribal communities. As a result, the entire local economy came under the control of some powerful players, the book says.
Some villagers have about 50 legal cases against them, accusing them of murder, rioting and treason. The activists claim that the villagers are being ‘trapped’ wrongly. , Photo Credit: Biswanjan Route
He indicates the Socio Economic and Cast Census (SECC) 2011 that 65.35% of the families were landless in Narayanpatna. Depending on seven indicators, including the quality of housing, level of education, landlessness and income, among others, 85.95% of families were classified here as ‘deprived’. In Narayanapatna, 76.82% of families depend on daily wages.
By the year 2000, the system of bonded labor was present in remote villages of Narayanpatna. Adivasis had been opposing this oppressive system for a long time. In June 2008, after years of dissatisfaction, his displeasure spread to a rebellion. The tribal villagers started occupying agricultural land organized by non-tribals and forcibly paddy. The CMAS later re -prepared this land among the tribal families.
Linga, a 50 -year -old tribal leader, says, “After generations of subordination, the tribals finally tasted the power to emphasize,” as a teenager in the late 1980s, as a teenager, Linga says that he and his brother Kashi were forced to work as bonded laborers in a moneylender’s house in Podapadar village. “Our wages of 60 per year. In turn, we worked, often without breakfast,” he remembers. “It was all to repay an one of 100 loans that our father had taken from a cooperative society. Since we had no means to repay it, Moneyelender made a deal: He paid the loan on our behalf, and took both of us in bondage for four years.”
Linga said that Bondage never resolved the loan. He started gathering fellow tribals, which encouraged them to harvest forest produce along with paddy cultivation. “I faced violent resistance from both upper-caste and Dalit groups to unite the tribals,” they say. “But we took a vow – to free our people from bondage, no matter the cost.”
CMAS workers will mark the land occupied by placing red flags and will proceed with crop harvesting, often in disregard of a heavy police appearance. Over time, the movement says, the movement was successful in recovering about 3,500 acres of land.
A big price to pay
Fear of agitation may spread to other areas, paramilitary forces such as the Border Security Force and the Central Reserve Police Force were deployed to suppress it. Strict sections of IPC were slapped on people participating in CMAS rallies. There were more than two dozen cases against many people. Most of the allegations were coined; The police failed to prove any allegation. All the accused villagers were acquitted, who are involved in 400 cases.
In a 2009 attack at Narayanpatn police station, 2,000 anonymous persons were cited in the FIR, in which the names of the villagers were added to the later stages. There is not a single punishment in the case of police station attack.
A tribal villagers go back to Podapadar village after collecting firewood. , Photo Credit: Biswanjan Route
In Dumsil village, Alibi sold his gold jewelry and spent his hard -earned savings to fight the legal battle. “Where do you find four members of a family to accuse him of waging war against the nation?” She says.
To avoid arrest, the villagers paid a heavy price. According to cultural criteria, with a large group of members of the community with tribal people when appearing in police stations or courts. The accused is expected to arrange transport and food for all. “Many people had to sell their bulls or cows to manage legal costs,” Routre. He hopes that the high judiciary will stop arrest in Narayanpatn.
satyasundar.b@thehindu.co.in
Edited by Sunlini Matthew
