“Being Neutral is Our Biggest Crime” - Global Coalition to Protect ...

The Chhattisgarh state government response
Government officials maintained that underage SPOs were no longer a part of their
SPO force. In fact, Vishwa Ranjan, the state director general of police even denied
that underage SPOs were recruited and reasoned that tribal youth appeared younger
than they actually were:
There are many reports of underage SPOs but it’s not true. Age is very
difficult to assess. Tribal communities have a peculiar way of aging.
They look very young even if they are not very young and then after a
particular age, they begin to age very fast—so suddenly they look very
old when they are actually not that old. We ask people what their age
is and verify it with the sarpanch. 434
However, the Dantewada Superintendent of Police Sharma conceded that there had
been recruitment of underage SPOs and stated that the police department had taken
action to identify and remove such SPOs from their posts:
A small percentage of SPOs were underage. It was a bona fide mistake.
Now they have all been removed. We got strict instructions from the
MHA [Ministry of Home Affairs]. You tell us what we can do—if we ask
them [applicants for SPO posts] for their age they say something like “I
was born in winter.” We cannot go by their height and looks because
the tribal build is different. They are also not educated and so we have
reduced their educational qualification to allow them to be SPOs—they
should have passed class five. However, we have tried to look at
available records and have removed those that appear to be underage
from the force. 435
434 Human Rights Watch interview with Vishwa Ranjan, December 17, 2007. Nandini Sundar and others v. State of
Chhattisgarh, Counter Affidavit on Behalf of Respondent, January 22, 2008, p. 311, para. 5(e); p. 315, para. 6.
435 Human Rights Watch interview with Rahul Sharma, second interview, February 1, 2008. See also, National Commission for
the Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), “Visit to Dantewada (Chhattisgarh) and Khammam (Andhra Pradesh) to Investigate
Status of Health and Education of Children affected by Civil Unrest, December 17-19, 2007” report, March 2008, p. 11. The
NCPCR report states: “With regard to violation of children’s rights the Committee [NCPCR] would like to specifically note that
in reference to the practice of the recruitment of children under 18 years of age as SPOs, the government and police agreed
that this had occurred in the past due to lack of strong protocols on age validation but assured us that these have now been
strictly enforced.”
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