#ReportingToRemember the Andhra state government for erasing the rapes of 11 women of the Kondh Tribe committed by police personnel.

On August 20th, 2007, 11 women of the Kondh tribe in a tribal village called Vakapalli, in the Visakhapatnam district of Andhra Pradesh, were raped by 13 Greyhound personnel.

The Greyhounds are a special unit of the police force that operates in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, and specialises in anti-insurgency operations against Maoists and Naxalites. The names and castes of the rapists have not been reported. The victims belonged to the Kondh tribe, and are classified as a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG) in Andhra Pradesh, a sub-classification under Scheduled Tribes.

Vakapalli falls in one of several areas along the Andhra Pradesh-Odisha border where Naxalites have a presence. The Greyhounds personnel stormed the village at around 6 AM in the morning, for what they called a “combing operation”, or looking for Naxalites. The men had left to work in the farms much earlier in the morning, at around 4-4:30 AM. Only women and children were present in the village at the time. The Greyhounds surrounded the village, began to ransack the homes in the village, and cut the power supply of the village. They raped women. Some women were raped at gunpoint. Some women were raped in the fields. 11 Kondh women of the hamlet were raped, out of whom 7 women were gangraped.

Operations to “flush” out Maoists or Naxalites by state personnel or state-sponsored militant groups has long been an excuse to inflict violence against tribal communities, especially women. When the 11 victims sought justice against the rapists, they were faced with dismissal and victim-blame from the State as well as their community.

On the day of the violence, the 11 women went to file an FIR. The local police refused to file one, saying that the women had fabricated the crime. The Superintendent of Police Akum Sabharwal, said that the allegations were baseless and the women wanted to tarnish the image of the police. The Director General of Police, MA Basit said that the allegations were baseless and part of a ploy by Maoists to discourage combing operations. The FIR was only registered a week later after protests by villagers.

On September 6, 2007, an inquiry was initiated by the State Government under the charge of the Secretary of Tribal Welfare. The State Government inquiry report said that no medical evidence of rape was found. However, this was based on the FIR that had been filed week after the rape, where the delay had made it difficult for any medical evidence to be recorded. In the inquiry, the police accepted that 21 Greyhounds personnel were present in the hamlet on that day but denied the allegations of rape, instead claiming that the 30 women in the hamlet had attacked them when they attempted to take one person into custody during a routine combing operation.

Combing operation is the police terminology to refer to operations where armed personnel often storm tribal areas, arresting and attacking tribal people the police claim are Naxalites. Terming someone as a Naxalite justifies various forms of violence in the eyes of the state and state personnel are able to inflict this violence with impunity. This is a punishment for resistance that is faced disproportionately by tribal communities.

The inquiry reported listed above also recommended that an investigation be conducted without any further loss of time, since no investigation had begun even 18 days after the police complaint was filed.

A tribal-rights organisation, Andhra Pradesh Girijan Samakhya, filed a petition in the High Court in September 2007, following which the investigation was handed over to the superintendent of police of the Crime Investigation Department. On November 14, 2007, based on the Crime Investigation Department’s report, the High Court dismissed the petition.

In 2008, the victims challenged the CID report before a local magistrate which began proceedings in the case. However, the High Court stopped the proceedings based on an appeal by the accused. Four years later, it ruled that only 13 out of the 21 accused Greyhound personnel could be tried in the case. The 13 Greyhound personnel filed another petition in the Supreme Court to quash the criminal case against them.

In 2017, ten years after the rape of the 11 women, the Supreme Court dismissed the appeal of the accused and ruled that the case should be concluded in the next six months. However, the police, protecting the accused, have continued to cause delays. As of February 2020, the case was still not concluded, with the police refusing to cooperate and claiming that key documents required for the trial are ‘untraceable’.

The accused State Greyhound personnel abused their power by inflicting trauma and injustice on the victims. The state machinery including the police delayed the case, making the victims and their communities even more powerless. In the many years following the violence, the victims have faced victim blame in various forms, such as listed below - - -

According to a local custom, women who face harm are separated from their families and not allowed into their homes until the perpetrators are punished . One of the women was separated from her new-born baby as well. They were provided shelter during this separation by the village leader. However, during this time, one of the women died from a snake bite. Another woman died after severe mental trauma. When the community realised that seeking justice against the police would be a long battle, a cleaning ritual was performed on the women. The women were asked to bathe themselves in the cold water of a nearby river before they could enter their homes. Many of the women restricted themselves to working and staying at home for years due to the fear and shame of being identified in public. The victims were also ordered by the panchayat to pay 10,000 rupees and a bull each as penalty for being raped. The penalties were waived off after intervention by an NGO. Husbands of the now ostracised victims began to resent them. One husband of a victim said that even though he knew it was not her fault, sometimes he got so angry at her that he felt like ‘drinking her blood’. Another husband wished that his wife had died after being gang-raped. Due to ostracization from the community, two of the women were abandoned by their husbands.

Meanwhile, the police intimidated and harassed various members of the community in retaliation for the women’s attempts at accessing justice. The police blocked their access to facilities such as healthcare, banks, higher education, revenue offices, and so on, all of which were located in the mandal headquarters. People travelling to and from there were illegally detained and abused in custody. One man, named Korra Chinnabai, disappeared shortly after the police told his friend that there was a Naxal case against him. The police denied having him in custody. The police filed numerous Naxal cases against the villagers to demoralise them and increase the pressure on the victims.

Throughout their battle for justice, the women continued to face the accusation that they were lying because they were Maoists or because they were protecting Maoists.Even if they were maoists,, it doesn’t negate the fact the women were raped, but calling Adivasi women Maoists or Maoist sympathisers is the State’s way of justifying and blaming them for any violence inflicted upon them.