A legal awareness camp was held in the Naxals’ den at village Karma under Nawadeeh panchayat on Friday. The upgraded government middle school in Karma is 17 km off Daltonganj and a journey to this school by road is fraught with dangers like tyres getting burst due to bad roads, dense forests on both the sides and the fear of Naxals’ attack.
Senior lady lawyer Veena Mishra, judicial officers senior munsif B K Pandey and secretary Palamu district legal services authority Uttam Anand, reached the venue and held the camp attended by a modest gathering of women and students who were there in good numbers for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech on Teachers’ Day.
On reaching the venue, the judicial team found a large number of policemen sitting under a tree in this humid climate. There was no mike. Nevertheless, the gathering heard the two judicial officers, Pandey and Anand, with
rapt attention.
Munsif Pandey spoke on witchcraft practices prevalent in the villages and asked the women there to be up and working against it. DlSA secretary Uttam Anand asked the mothers there to get their children educated. Mishra too spoke on the practice of witchcraft when she said, “It is always a poor widow who is branded as witch. Has anyone heard a wrestler’s wife branded as a witchIJ” The message was loud and clear.
Neither Pandey nor Anand spoke any legal jargon. They spoke in the language of the commoner. One listener in the gathering sitting behind these two judicial officers started complaining of lack of basic facilities in this village Karma where there are just two tubewells for a cluster of 40 houses. One other spoke of the lack of a concrete structure for the devi dham there.
The chief of the Village Education Committee D Kerketta said this legal team is the first one to reach here in all these years of Independence.