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

to our village had bows and arrows, sticks, and the police had rifles.
From our village they also raped [name withheld] (about age 20). They
raped her and left her in the village itself. 80
Salwa Judum members came back again and burned their entire village. They
continued,
Judum members came again after a month in the afternoon. This time
they killed Madkam Adma (age 50). They shot him and stabbed him.
Adma was in his house when this happened. They burned the entire
village. The second time people came on foot only—Judum with SPOs
and CRP police [CPRF]. SPOs were wearing police uniforms. 81
The villagers said Mukudtong was not close to the road, making access difficult.
Villages that were close to the roads had it worse, they said:
In Kotacheru they used to go almost every day because it was very
close to the road. They killed five to six people. One of them was the
patel [village headman]. His name was also Madkam Adma. We don’t
know the other names. [We heard that] they [Salwa Judum members
and government security forces] raped many women from Kotacheru
but we know only one of them who was raped—her name is [name
withheld] (about age 22). 82
Villagers also reported that Salwa Judum members abducted many people from
markets and took them to camps. One villager from Toodayem said,
I had gone to the Matwada bazaar one day last year [2006] and Judum
people saw me in the bazaar, caught me, and started beating me. They
80 Human Rights Watch interview with Vadtam Veera and Vadtam Cheena (pseudonyms), IDPs from Mukudtong, village K10,
Khammam district, December 7, 2007.
81 Ibid.
82 Ibid. Note that this Madkam Adma is a different individual from the Madkam Adma named in the previous account. It is not
unusual for villagers to have identical names.
“Being Neutral is Our Biggest Crime” 38