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following a trial that afforded due process to the accused, and denied that innocent
persons were killed:
Regarding the jan adalat in Manikonta village, the first point we would
like to place before you is that those who were punished were not
villagers as you describe them but were paid SPOs and SJ [Salwa
Judum] goons who had committed terrible atrocities on the people in
the name of Salwa Judum. A retribution of that order is a necessity to
control these goons. Common people, generally speaking, do not go to
the extent of killing those who had committed crimes. The fact that
hundreds of people who were present in the jan adalat resorted to this
extreme measure shows the pent-up anger and righteous indignation
of the people intimidated since June 2005 without a let up…. The very
fact that out of the 57 people taken away by the jan militia led by our
PLGA from the concentration camp and 44 of them were let off after
due investigation of their deeds speaks of the fairness of the jan
adalats unlike the so-called courts of law that let off the real culprits
and throw the innocents for long years into jails. 368
They further sought to justify their killings of policemen as a measure of last resort:
We are as much grieved as you when policemen are killed in our
ambushes and raids. We made several appeals to the policemen and
their families not to kill innocent people or launch attacks on our cadre.
We had issued leaflets appealing the Naga battalion jawans, CRPF
jawans to defy orders from their superiors and to desist from attacks.
We have composed a number of songs describing the plight of poor
and unemployed youth who are forced to join police force due to lack
of alternative employment. Whenever we attack the police we try to
minimise bloodshed. We had never killed any policeman who
surrendered … We stand for the defence of the people’s rights and it is
368 Letter from Ganapathi, secretary general, CPI (Maoist), to the Independent Citizen’s Initiative, October 10, 2006,
http://www.cgnet.in/N1/maoistreplytoici/view?searchterm=reply (accessed February 20, 2008), para. 3.
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Human Rights Watch July 2008