The gruesome killings of seven villagers in West Singhbhum district on January 17 were ‘not even remotely’ related to the Pathalgadi movement, an independent fact-finding team of the Congress party has found during its visit to the Burugurikela village.
A six-member team, headed by Congress MP Geeta Koda, visited the tribal-dominated village on Monday and also spoke at length with the families of the diseased about the incident.
“Our team found that the killings were not even remotely related to the Pathalgadi movement.
I cannot disclose more details about our findings since we have not submitted the report to the Jharkhand Pradesh Congress Committee (JPCC) yet,” said former Human Resource Development Minister Geetashree Oraon, who was a part of the fact-finding team.
Soon after the killings, media reports highlighted that the seven deceased men had allegedly had a tiff with some Pathalgadi supporters a day before they were killed.
They were reportedly abducted for protesting the Pathalgadi supporters’ demand of surrendering their Government identity and welfare cards. The next day, police found their bodies with their throat slit from jungles near the village.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been questioning the Government’s decision of withdrawing sedition charges leveled against Pathalgadi supporters in 2017, claiming that the leniency towards Pathalgadi supporters was encouraging such crimes in Jharkhand hinterland.
A BJP team of six MPs, including some from Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal, were not allowed to enter the Burugurigela village recently – a development that further intensified the BJP’s attacks on the Government for allegedly saving the Pathalgadi supporters.
Some reports also said that the People’s Liberation Front of India (PLFI) – a Left Wing Extremist (LWE) group active in Jharkhand – might be behind the killings. However, the Congress party’s fact-finding team also rubbished the reports of PLFI’s involvement in the incident. “There is no role of PLFI in the incident,” Oraon said.
While the police have said that personal rivalry could be a reason for the coldblooded murders, they are yet to release an official statement on the reason behind the killings. Oraon on Wednesday hinted that personal rivalry could be a trigger for the attacks. However, she refused to disclose details about the team’s findings. “We will submit the report within a couple of days and let everyone know about our findings,” she said.
The six-member team was constituted by Jharkhand Pradesh Congress Committee (JPCC) president Rameshwar Oraon on January 24. The Congress party is a part of the ruling coalition Government in Jharkhand. It has 16 legislators in the 81-member Assembly and four ministers in the Cabinet.
The Pathalgadi movement in Jharkhand, which has its epicenter in Khunti, advocates the idea of having liberated lands in the interiors where the administration’s interventions were prohibited.
In 2017, villagers in parts of Khunti district held Pathalgadi –a practice of demarcating the borders of a village and declaring it as liberated land through writings on stone plaques – and allegedly prohibited entry of the administration in their villages.
Soon after coming to power in the end of 2019, Chief Minister Hemant Soren announced that sedition charges against Pathalgadi supporters will be scrapped.