It was about 6am in the morning when Madvi Marko asked her two sons to go and pick mahua flowers from the forests of Dokapur, near their home in the Bastar Range of India’s central Chhattisgarh state.
Like any other family from the tribal communities of this remote and conflict-ridden region, March is the season when they get busy collecting the season’s bloom, which they can sell in the market for Rs 30-40 (30 to 40p) per kg. That morning was supposed to be no different for this family, till her younger son Channu Mandavi returned panting and breathless a short while later.
“He told us that the forces killed Badru,” the mother tells The Independent from her home in the village of Gampur, as she breaks down crying. “I ran to the forest with their aunt and grandmother. But they assaulted me as I begged them to give me the body of my dead son.”
Along with several northeastern states, Chhattisgarh is host to a militant insurgency made up of radical communists. Emerging from a 1967 left-wing rebellion in the Naxalbari village of West Bengal and inspired by Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong, these ”Maoist” or “Naxal” fighters have been clashing with the Indian government for more than four decades. The guerilla group claims to defend the rights of indegenous tribes as they attempt to overthrow the state.
On 19 March 2020, Badru, 22, was killed in an “exchange of fire” between Maoists and central and state reserve forces, says P Sundarraj, the Inspector General of Police serving in the Bastar Range. “In this encounter, a dead body of a Naxal male cadre Badru Mandavi was recovered.”
The family fervently denies the claim. “Badru was not a Maoist or a Naxal,” says Channu, now 12. “He was an innocent tribal who was killed in front of my eyes.”
“My brother was right ahead of me when the officials shot him,” he recalls. “They even shot at me but I somehow escaped.”
Two years on, the family are still demanding an investigation into how their son was killed and the registration of a preliminary chargesheet against the soldiers involved. And knowing the uphill struggle they face against a system with a poor track record for accountability, they have taken an exceptionally rare step — they are refusing to put Badru to rest.
The young man’s remains have been embalmed with salt and other herbs, wrapped in a shroud and preserved in a two-foot deep crater in the graveyard located a couple of kilometres from the village. The top of the pit is covered with wooden logs, a tarpaulin sheet and a thin layer of mud.
That means it could resemble any other burial site, except it does not. The plot is marked with an inverted charpoy, and the top is easily removeable so that when the time comes for an investigation, Badru’s preserved remains can be used as evidence. Only then will he receive a traditional funeral.
The family’s actions are unusual because the Gond tribe in this village, like many communities in India, does not normally bury the dead. Bodies are instead cremated, and on the funeral pyre the family burn all the other belongings of the deceased, including their clothes. Badru’s are still swaddled in the corner of a hut, out of sight of his mother, who wells up each time they catch her eyes.
The villagers have not entirely done away with all rituals for Badru — they have at least placed a tombstone in his name, right outside the village. But while all the other tombstones are huddled together, his remains isolated on one side of the road, with his loincloth tied to it.
“If we cremate the body, then the proof will be gone,” says Badru’s mother, who remains hopeful that the courts might order a fresh postmortem. “And therefore, as a family, we have taken the decision to let the body remain as is, till we get justice.”
The family brought their case to Chhattisgarh High Court in March this year, saying they were unable to make the long journey to file the petition earlier due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the resulting restrictions on movement. A hearing is expected soon.
Sundarraj says an independent inquiry has already been carried out, in May last year, and found no wrongdoing on the part of the security forces in the case.
Tribals collecting sweet mahua flowers – sold as a grape-like food item or to be fermented into a local liquor – in the forests of Bastar
“Efforts are [ongoing] to convince the villagers to complete the burial rituals in a traditional way, considering the public health issues” arising from preserving a body in this way, said the police official, while claiming that the case is being politicised by someone “playing mischief and playing with the sentiments of the local population”.
Yet Badru’s case is not the first instance where residents of this village have taken the extreme step of refusing to conduct last rites after a contentious death. The killing is reminiscent of another incident five years ago when two members of the tribal community were shot dead by the military – a young man named Bheema Kadti and a 14-year-old girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons.
The official narrative then was similar: two “members of West Bastar Division Naxal formation” killed in an “exchange of fire”. And like in Badru’s case, the family of the two also denied the claims of the security forces, in turn accusing them of extrajudicial killing.
“They were not Maoist,” the family submitted in court, adding that they were picked up by the military on their way home from the Kirandul market, located about 40km from the village.
Badru Mandavi’s remains preserved inside a pit dug, with the plot of land marked by an inverted charpoy
Villagers in Bechapal protesting against the construction of roads and new paramilitary camps in the region
