New Delhi: The Supreme Court has turned down a 13-year-old petition seeking extrajudicial killings of tribals in Chhattisgarh during an anti-Naxal operation. Along with this, the court has also imposed a penalty of Rs 5 lakh for the petitioner. At the same time, the Supreme Court has allowed an inquiry to see if some people and organisations are allegedly using the court to protect left-wing extremists.

A division bench of Justices AM Khanwilkar and JB Pardiwala gave the verdict on a petition filed in 2019 on behalf of tribal rights activist Himanshu Kumar and 12 others. The court had earlier reserved its verdict on May 19. At the same time, the court has asked the petitioner Kumar to deposit a fine of Rs 5 lakh within four weeks. In case of a non-deposit of fine, legal action will be taken against Kumar. The point to note here is that the petitioner himself sympathises with the Maoists. He had demanded a CBI probe against the Chhattisgarh Police and central security forces in connection with the killing of 17 tribals in Dantewada in 2009.

In February 2010, the Supreme Court had asked Delhi District Magistrate G P Mittal to record the statements of 12 tribal petitioners. The court had also asked for videography of the entire process. At the same time, he had also issued orders to provide security to the petitioners. The district judge then submitted a report on the statements on March 19, 2010. At that time, the Supreme Court had ordered all parties to submit a report. This year, the Central government filed a petition in the Supreme Court through the Ministry of Home Affairs.  

The petition said that a report of the district judge had gone missing from the court records, which the government received in March 2022. According to the Centre, the report revealed that the complainants had given statements before the district judge that some unidentified persons had come from the forest and killed the villagers. At the same time, no one had questioned the members of the security forces. The Centre had then requested the court to direct any central agency to investigate. Through this, the identity of those people and organisations talked about who is involved in litigation to save violent Maoist activities.

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