Mangalore, November 23, 2011
Pics: Dayanand Kukkaje
For eight long years Yashodha T of Idu Encounter fame silently suffered the ignominy of being branded as a Maoist, having been caught in the Idu Encounter of November 17, 2003. In the encounter at Bolluttu in Idu village, near Karkala, two suspected Maoists were killed and Yashodha was wounded resulting in her arrest and subsequent trial. Though caught unawares, Yashodha who faced the trial insisted she was innocent and had pinned her hopes on the judicial system of the country which, she says, has proved her innocence. Last month, Udupi District Sessions court absolved her of all the charges, thus relieving her and her family of a big load which they had carried for eight years.
Daijiworld special team went in search of Yashodha to her house at Haluvalli, near Kalasa in Chikmagalur taluk to meet her and get a first-hand experience of what life had in store for this gritty woman and how she was trying to rebuild her tattered life. It was Sunday, November 19 when we reached her house, a day after the completion of 8 years of that infamous encounter. We travers through the thick vegetation Western Ghats through Kudremukh National Park to reach Kalasa. We meander for another hour to reach her home via Haluvalli. The newly asphalted road takes us to her house at Jarimane where we park our vehicle and stroll through the 2 km long narrow mud road to reach her home. There is hardly a home or a human who we can ask for directions. Yashodha comes to meet us half way through to guide us through the estate as we were struggling to locate her house. In our mind at least, her small frame belies the charges leveled against her including that of trying to kill policemen.
The mud wall house has cement floored living room (if it can be called) and the two mud floored rooms is what forms her home. The only mark of any modernity in that home is a dish antenna and a toilet outside the home. The house belongs to Yashodha’s sister and Yashodha and her mother stays with their sister’s family. Her frail mother Subbamma, 65, greets her with folded hands and her toothless sunken cheeks wear a broad and innocent grin.
Iron Will
Once the conversation begins with Yashodha realization dawns that there is more to her thin frame. She belies her personality and the iron will in her is soon evident. For a moment one has to overlook that she has studied only up to 7th standard. The circumstances of her life must have added more vitality to her fighting spirit which is evident when she says “I knew truth will prevail and justice will come in my favour and after 8 years of struggle I feel good to be absolved of the charges. It is a victory for justice”. She is however, not too elated of the recent acquittal saying “I was ready for both good and bad”. May be it is a feeling borne out of the awful turn of events her life has taken. It also could be due to the fact that she is aware the fight is not over yet as the state is contemplating taking the matter to the High Court. Like a battle-hard soldier she is prepared for the fight ahead and the events of last eight years have made her mentally strong.
If she is innocent, as she claims which the court has proved now by absolving her, how did she bear the thunderstorm that hit her that fateful crack of dawn on November 17, 2003, when she was just 21? Though the incident shocked her initially she did not flinch or whimper. “The incident did not impact me mentally as I had not done any wrong. From a young age and even before the encounter I was active in opposing the Kudremukh National park and was fighting against oppression and for getting basic facilities. When this incident happened by innate strength helped me to take it as a challenge and was determined to prove that truth will win. I wanted to prove my innocence and that gave me the strength to carry on the fight”, she declares.
Incidentally Yashodha was aware of the discrimination, subjugation and oppression of the weaker sections and was in the forefront of opposing it. Her fighting spirit was noticeable at a young age which made her contest Panchayat elections on JD(S) ticket when she was barely 19. Though she lost, it marked the arrival of Yashodha in the political and social forefront. She became vociferous critic of the Kudremukh Natinal Park and the Kudremukh Reserve Forest which would have led to the displacement of many families. This entailed going to meetings to different places to plan further actions of protest.
Why was she trying to run away during the encounter as the police claim, if she was innocent? “I would have been killed like Parvathi and Hajima if I was trying to run away”, she declared adding “I saw both Parvathi and Hajima die in front of my eyes. Parvathi had died on the spot and Hajima was crying for help for almost an hour and died on the way to the hospital”. The police were targeting only the outsiders and were warning home people not to move from their places. There was no question of running away”.
The Dawn of Cataclysm
When asked to explain how she was present in the house of Rama Poojary at Idu on that fateful day she explains “I have been fighting against the Kudremukh National Park and the Kudremukh Reserve Forest as that would have resulted in the eviction of many families of our village. I was invited to Idu for a meeting by the Kudremukh Rashtriya Udyanavana Virodhi Okkoota of which I am a member and I left home that same morning to reach Idu. The meeting was fixed at 7 pm and about 100 including people from the neighborhood participated in the meeting. Since it was late she and others who had come from outside for the meeting decided to stay put at Rama Poojary’s house. All hell broke loose at about 3 am when there was a fracas and all I could see was a wounded Parvathi screaming and falling in our room. I only heard shouts of “hodeeri badeeri” and in the ensuing chaos I got panicked and began to climb an attic and Hajima too followed me. She was fat and could not climb and police shot her. I was sitting in the attic and got scared and decided to move towards the other corner as there was more space. When I got up to move I was shot from behind and the bullet hit me on my right hip”.
Yashodha was taken to Karkala Hospital from where it was advised to take her to Manipal. She claims “the police wanted to kill me. I could hear them saying let us take information from her and dump her forever. I thought that was the end of me but somehow it did not happen the way wanted”. She was admitted to KMC Manipal hospital where she stayed for five days. Subsequently she was in police custody for 11 days and was in Mysroe jail for 3 months and 20 days. Did she know Hajima or Parvathi or those Naxalites Vishnu and Anand who police claim escaped from Idu during the encounter? “I did not know who they were except that I acquainted them during the meeting at Rama Poojary’s house”, she replies. Even her family which came to know about her arrest through television did not know the enormity of being branded as a Naxalite as she says “they do not what Naxalites are to know the gravity or the enormity of my arrest”. Her father who was quite old and sick when police began to frequent her house for enquiry was quite worried for her as she was the last among his 5 children and was not married which was a constant cause of worry for her father.
Her father, who she says lived for 102 years passed away in 2005 due to old age. He had got married late and her mother was quite young at the time of their marriage. Yashodha says ever since she saw her father she remembers he had grey hair and was old. “I don’t have even a mental picture of how might have been during his younger days”, she quips in the midst of serious conversation. She even says she did not face much problem from people of her village because they knew her innocence and were quite supportive. “But people were scared to talk to me for the fear of facing police harassment. Even if I used to go to relatives they came searching for me and it was embarrassing for my relatives”, Yashodha recounts.
Being innocent, poor and an avowal denial alone were was not sufficient to prove her non-involvement with the Naxals. Being young and naïve she was not aware how the police or the judicial system works. Luckily for her some Human rights activists like P B D’Sa and B N Jagadeesh came to her rescue and through them she came to know her lawyer M Shantharam Shetty who along with Jagadeesh fought her case. Her family and relatives, she says, bore the expenses of fighting the case.
No buckling under Pressure
Though she says she was not physically tortured by the police, Yashodha says she was subjected to mental torture. “Imagine the police threatening me at gun point saying they would finish me off if I don’t concur being a Naxalite when I was recuperating in the hospital. Even during the police custody there was repeated interrogation and constant pressure to admit I was a Naxalite”, she recalls. After being released on bail for Rs 1 lakh Yashodha was asked to sign in the Kalasa police station twice a week and was advised not to leave Chikmagalur district. “Now that ordeal is over”, she heaves a sigh of relief.
In between she says there were efforts to prove she was a Naxalite and even there was an attempt to kill her in an ‘encounter’. She narrates that she was returning home late at night at around 11 pm in 2005 along with her nephew and a few of her relatives after watching television when the police surrounded them and shouted “hodiree” and were about to shoot. “I screamed calling loudly the name of the police whom I knew” saying “I am Yashodha” and only then they came forward and behaved in a familiar way.
What has the encounter and aftermath has taught her or how has been the experience of living with the tag of “Naxalite”. “The encounter has exposed me to the police system, the judiciary, the law, the society, the iniquitous society, tyranny of the rich and the powerful, the rising greed among the haves etc,. I was unaware of the world outside and this incident has given me an exposure. I am determined to fight with a renewed vigour and will fight against injustice and oppression of women”, she declares in a tone of equanimity. Now she is a much more confident woman exposed to the awful world outside her own terrain.
The seeds of fighting against injustice might have sprung from the fact that her paternal property was usurped by a rich estate owner and her family was left without anything. She had explained this to Madhukar Shetty (who stirred a hornet’s nest recently with his comments on Lokayukta) who was appointed SP of Chikmagalur after the Idu encounter. Madhukar Shetty was appalled by the wretched conditions of the village that lacked basic amenities and along with DC Harsh Gupta had initiated many measures to improve the area. But both of them were transferred in a jiffy within 8 months of their appointment.
Rebuilding Shattered Life
Yashodha is now trying to put together the shattered pieces of her life and is preparing to appear for her SSLC exam privately. She is undertaking contract work at the estates and works in her own land. In the last few years her family was able to get 1.5 acres of land which is now sustaining the family including the 2 acres of land of her sister.
A doubt arises whether Yashodha, now 29, is contemplating a secure and settled life having gone through a tough phase of life? She accepts that in the course of last 8 years she did get a few marriage proposals. But the uncertainty of the case prevented her from taking any major decision of her life. “Marriage does not top the list of my agenda. I have determined to fight for fundamental facilities and against unjust methods of the government and I will fight against it within the framework of the constitution. I am also working with many Self Help Groups. If someone comes forward to marry and we agree on certain conditions, there is nothing that prevents me from getting settled”, explains Yashodha.
When the time is up for us to move we ask her what she has to say as a parting riposte. “I hope the police and the system will allow me to lead a normal and humane life without further persecuting me. Instead of branding me as a Naxalite I should be allowed to lead a normal and dignified life. However, I will continue to fight against injustice and tyranny but within the constitutional framework. I hope the system will help me to live with my dignity intact. Even if a child is beaten constantly it will react one day unable to bear it. If they continue their vindictiveness I cannot vouch for myself what my fate will be” she says with a tenor that leaves a lot unsaid.
Lawyer M Shantaram Shetty Says:
When contacted Lawyer M Shantaram Shetty, who defended her case in the Sessions court, says “Yashodha’s acquittal was on four grounds as she possessed a passbook showing she worked as a coolie, she had stayed back at Idu as she did not have a return bus, she had contested the Panchayat elections on JD(S) ticket two years back and the prosecution could not prove she possessed a gun. Shantaram Shetty also said that there were many loopholes in police version including the theory of so called Maoists shooting at police officials. “If the police claimed they were shooting from a higher elevation from a distance of 40 feet the entry and exit wound should have been from top to down. However, the wounds on the bodies of the dead did not prove it which showed that they were killed from a distance of six feet”. He also said there were also no bullets on the walls or surrounding areas from the Maoists who the police claim tried to shoot at them resulting in their killing.
It is not clear whether the prosecution department thinks it is a fit case for appealing to the High Court as there is time gap of 3 months (90 days) for appeal.
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