Cong forms panel to probe Chaibasa killings

| | Ranchi
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Cong forms panel to probe Chaibasa killings

Sunday, 26 January 2020 | PNS | Ranchi

The Congress party has constituted a special six-member team, headed by MP Geeta Koda, to visit Burugelikera village – a tribal-dominated hamlet in West Singhbhum where seven men were killed over an alleged dispute – on Monday and prepare a report on what triggered the massacre.

The team, which includes former Human Resource Development Minister Geetashree Oraon and other senior Congress party leaders, was constituted by Jharkhand Pradesh Congress Committee (JPCC) President Rameshwar Oraon on Friday.

The six-member committee will also meet the families of the murdered villagers and submit a final report to the JPCC within three days after their visit, JPCC Working President Keshav Mahto Kamlesh said. “The team will visit the village and investigate the incident independently in order to find what led to the gruesome killings,” he said.

On January 17, the seven deceased men had allegedly had a tiff with some Pathalgadi supporters. They were reportedly abducted for protesting the Pathalgadi supporters’ demand of surrendering their Government identity and welfare cards. The next day, police found their bodies with their throat slit from jungles near the village.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which now sits in the opposition bench in Jharkhand Assembly, had also constituted a special committee to independently investigate the incident. However, the members of the committee were not allowed to enter the village on Friday and resorted to staging a protest. The party workers also staged a protest on Saturday outside Raj Bhavan in Ranchi for not being allowed to visit the village.

The Pathalgadi movement in Jharkhand, which has its epicenter in Khunti, advocated the idea of having liberated lands in the interiors where the administration’s interventions were prohibited. In 2017, villagers in parts of Khunti district held Pathalgadi –a practice of demarcating the borders of a village and declaring it as liberated land through writings on stone plaques – and allegedly prohibited entry of the administration in their villages. Soon after coming to power in the end of 2019, Chief Minister Hemant Soren announced that sedition charges against Pathalgadi supporters will be scrapped.

However, while the opposition is holding Pathalgadi supporters responsible for the murders, the police have said that personal rivalry may have led to the killings. There is no clarity for now on what led to the killings in the village.

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