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SONBHADRA MASSACRE HIGHLIGHTS THE PERILS
OF SEMI-FEUDAL SYSTEM FOR A COMMON MAN !
On 17 th July, in Umbha village of Sonbhadra
district of UP more than 100 gun-wielding goondas
belonging to the village Head (pradhan) Yagya Dutt
Bhuriya shot dead 10 poor people of gond tribe,
including a teen ager and three women in cold blood.
Many others were critically injured. The innocent
Gonds were killed and injured while they were
working in their fields of the land in their possession
and cultivation for decades.
The land being cultivated by the Gonds once
belonged to the earstwhile Raja of Badhoor Anand
Brahma Saha. After the abolition of Zamindari
system, the land was marked as ‘barren’ in the
revenue records and later transferred as Gram
Sabha land to be cultivated by Gond tribals. But this
land was illegally and fraudulently transferred first
to ‘Adarsh Krishi Kalyan Society’ in 1955 and sold to
the village-Head of Umbha in 2017. This unlawful
and illegal transfer and sale of the land cultivated
by the gonds is not known to them and they are
cultivating it as usual.
A Bihar cadre IAS officer Prabhat Kumar Mishra
formed the Adarsh Krishi Kalyan Society appointing
his father-in-law Maheshwari Prasad Sinha from
Muzafarpur of Bihar as its president and his daughter
Vinita as the Manager and his wife Asha as an office
bearer. The society was registered illegally under
the UP Society Act, by violating the stipulation of the
said Act that a person should be the domicile of UP
to get a society registered.
Around 463 bighas of the Gram Sabha land
was transferred unlawfully to this illegal society in
1955. After Sinha’s death, about 200 bighas of land
was transferred to Asha Mishra and Vinita in 1989.
They then sold 144 bighas to Yagya Dutt Bhuria the
village pradhan of Umbha for Rs 2 crores in 2017.
Gram Pradhan, being an influential person in
Ghorawal area in Sonbhadra district, has chosen to
massacre the Gond tribals cultivating the land to
evict them from their lands and to take those lands
into his possession.
This is how the landlords, rich powerful and
influential people became a law unto themselves,
are illegally grabbing the lands belonging to the
people of weaker sections with violence and carnage.
Though it is a recent one, such incidents of
violence against the people of weaker sections for
grabbing their lands have been occurring throughout
UP and the Country for all these 72 years of our
‘independent India’. This is a common phenomenon
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in our Country where the landlords, money lenders
and rich classes commit horrible crimes against the
people of weaker sections, to gobble up their lands
with violence and slaughter. But, as a part of the
ruling classes, they are never restrained or punished
by the governments under their class rule and are
acquitted, set free unscathed in courts of law. Most
of the incidents of atrocities and physical attacks
against the Dalits and weaker sections occurring in
our Country are basically related to so-called ‘land
disputes’ arose from the illegal land grabbing of
landlords and rich classes.
Sonbhadra massacre is highly condemnable
and reprehensible.It symbolizes the existence of
semi-feudal system in India with its grip over the
people, permitting illegal land grabbing by the
landlord classes with impunity at the cost of lives
and livelihood of the people.
To appease and hoodwink the public outrage
and outcry against Sonbhadra massacre, the Yogi’s
BJP govt. of UP has ordered an enquiry into the
incident, besides suspending some lower officials.
But, even at the beginning of the farcical
enquiry, it is discovered that papers related to the
unlawful transfer of Gram Panchayat land to Adarsh
Society in 1955 are missing from the district revenue
office. This exposes the nexus between politicians,
landlord classes, revenue officers and other
governmental agencies that facilitates the unlawful
land grabbing by the influential and rich classes.
It is not a secret that in BJP raj of UP state, it is
the poor, landless peasants and other weaker
sections are bereft of governmental protection in a
range of crimes in which communal gangs or
particular caste groups have typically been
perpetrators. Members of Muslim community have
been frequent targets using the slogans of love
Jihad, cow slaughter and the like. Atrocities against
dalit are a daily occurrence in UP. Now the Gond
tribal people are the target. And the perpetrators of
all these crimes are ensures by the BJP Govt. to go
scot free by defeating the very process of justice.
So one need not have any illusion whatsoever that
the perpetrators of Sonbhadra will be punished.Such
is the class nature of our semi-feudal system. The
tribal people of Sonbhadra have a long struggle to
wage in defence of their rights.
It came to light that there are around 4000 such
cases of illegal land grabbing land disputes in the
state. It is also noteworthy
contd. on page 23
Class Struggle