Jharkhand: Civil rights group accuses state of spreading misinformation on repression of Adivasis

Civil rights group Jharkhand Janadhikar Mahasabha on Friday accused the state government of spreading misinformation to downplay the repression of Adivasis in Khunti district.

Earlier on Friday, the Jharkhand Police said media reports have given “totally incorrect and hugely inflated figures” about the number of people booked in sedition cases in the district.

On Tuesday, Scroll.in had reported that the police had filed sedition cases against more than 10,000 people in the district over 2017 and 2018 when Adivasi villages erected stone monoliths with engravings of the Indian Constitution related to tribal autonomy.

The Jharkhand Janadhikar Mahasabha said that it had conducted a fact-finding inquiry in August to “understand the Adivasis’ motivation for doing Pathalgadi and the response of the administration”. Pathalgadi is a practice adopted by some villages to declare their gram sabha as the only sovereign authority, not the state or central government.

“The team was able to access 15 FIRs and had found that the police had charged about 150 named persons and at least 10,000 unnamed people under several charges including sedition,” the organisation said.

“In at least three FIRs covering several villages, rather than mentioning the number of accused ‘unknowns’, they mention ‘other unknown men and women of village involved in unconstitutional activity’. This means...

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