1. The Forever War: Inside India's Maoist Conflict
- Author:
- Megha Bahree
- Publication Date:
- 06-2010
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- World Policy Journal
- Institution:
- World Policy Institute
- Abstract:
- CHHATTISGARH STATE, India—It was 4 p.m. one March afternoon in 2008. The victims were living in a relief camp in a village called Matwada. Two dozen members of a government-backed civilian militia, accompanied by at least one police officer, burst into their homes. They dragged four men out onto the street, across from a paramilitary office, and began to beat them with sticks. They paused to pour water over the Matwada men, waking them when they fainted out of pain and fear. When their wives flung themselves across their husbands' weakened bodies, they were beaten too. Then the men were dragged from sight, into the forest. One managed to escape. The next day the remaining three were found buried next to a stream, stabbed in the eyes and the neck and finished off with a knife stab to the head. The men were suspected of being informants, of aiding the nascent Maoist insurgency in the eastern Indian state of Chhattisgarh. The survivor and three widows filed a criminal case against the state, and a court decided recently that the State of Chhattisgarh would compensate them for the wrongful attacks.
- Topic:
- Civil War and Government
- Political Geography:
- India