annual report print final.qxd - Asian Centre for Human Rights

INDIA HUMAN RIGHTS REPORT 2005 Kerala
Impunity is one of the root causes of
continued violations by the State Police.
On 4 February 2004, the Kerala Lok
Ayukta recommended to Director General
of Police to order a departmental enquiry
into the actions of the head constable
Sugathan of Ettumanoor Police Station,
Kottayam for torturing one P.K. Joy, a
small-scale merchant on 26 April 2003.
But no action was taken. With no other
option, Joy had to file a petition before the
Kerala High Court on 3 May 2004. 8
III. Atrocities against indigenous
peoples
While Kerala did not witness any
major violent incident like the killings at
Muthanga on February 2003, the Adivasis,
indigenous and tribal peoples, continued to
be exploited by “non-tribals” who have
been gradually usurping their lands.
On 18 October 2004, the Central
Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed three
charge sheets against 184 persons after its
investigation into the police's violent
repression of landless adivasis' occupation
of land in the Muthanga Wildlife Reserve
on 19 February 2005. The Adivasis were
protesting against the government's failure
to comply with an agreement made to
provide 53,000 landless Adivasi families
with up to 5 acres of land and include these
areas under the Vth Schedule of the
Constitution. Under the first charge sheet,
21 persons have been charged with
murder. The second charge-sheet pertained
to trespassing in the reserve. The third is
regarding the forest officials' detention
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when they and others were caught redhanded
setting fire to the forests so that the
blame could be put on the agitating
adivasis and this could then be used as a
pretext to forcibly evict them.
The CBI, however, absolved the
police, forest officials and the mafia of any
crime or human rights violations. The CBI
has stated that the agitation was initially
peaceful. Later, erecting check-points and
not allowing forest officials entry into the
forest placed impediments on the normal
functioning of forest officials. The CBI
stated that the use of force by the police
was after all legal formalities had been
observed. C.K Janu, the adivasi leader,
has approached the Kerala High Court to
appoint a special investigative team to
unearth the truth. 9
The government of Kerala however
has taken little measures to provide the
lands to the Adivasis as land alienation
continues.Over 500 hectares of tribal land
spreading across 28 tribal settlements in
the Thiruvananthapuram forest territorial
division have been reportedly
“alienated”. 10
In 1998, sixty-one Kani families in
the Vettikkavu settlement in the
Peringamala area of Thiruvananthapuram
forest territorial division were given
assistance under a scheme of the Rubber
Board to grow rubber trees in their
landholdings. When the rubber trees
became ripe for tapping, non-tribals
gradually began to usurp the lands of the
tribals in exchange for a meager sum of