Seated outside her mud house in Burkapal, a tribal village in south Chhattisgarh’s Naxal-affected Sukma district, Markam Bime sums up half a decade of her life spent seeking justice for her incarcerated 50-year-old husband Markam Soma: “I visited the Jagdalpur jail a few times to meet him. Each meeting was just a phone call; neither of us could see each other. Conversations often did not last beyond an exchange of sobs. His only query was when he would be released. The only information I had was the next item that would be sold to secure his freedom.”
Nearly 10 km away lies Minpa, another tribal hamlet, where Podiyam Kosa, 30, is hacking the branches of a palm tree outside his house. He is attending to a task that has been pending for the last five years: building a thatched roof for the shed where his family stores forest produce. Kosa and his three brothers had spent those years languishing behind bars while their frail, old father managed the household and cared for the young children they had left behind.
Mr. Soma and Mr. Kosa are among the 121 tribals who were acquitted by a National Investigation Agency (NIA) court in Dantewada on July 15 this year after the prosecution failed to establish their involvement in the killing of 25 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) jawans in a 2017 Maoist ambush in Burkapal.
