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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Village mourns a fighter by Santosh K Kiro

Village mourns a fighter by Santosh K Kiro

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published Published on Mar 6, 2011   modified Modified on Mar 6, 2011
A deafening silence hovers over Jerua three days after firebrand activist Niyamat Ansari was dragged out of his home, beaten up and killed for exposing fraud perpetrated by unscrupulous contractors, possibly in cahoots with Maoists, while implementing projects meant to ensure financial empowerment for villagers.

Around 150km from the state capital, Jerua is part of Manika block in the Maoist hub of Latehar district. The 10-km mud road through dense forests that leads to the village of around 30 households has been deserted ever since the March 2 murder.

Rajmani, Niyamat’s widow, has been numbed into silence. Her eyes have swollen, and she is unable to get up from the charpoy as if paralysed. Her children, Shamsher (6), Warshi (3) and a new born, are being taken care of by her brother-in law, Muresha.

“How will the children get education? Who will earn bread for them?” says the elder brother of Niyamat.

Others in the village visit the family occasionally. But no one is speaking.

After much coaxing, Shyama Singh, agrees to talk. “Working for truth and justice has become very tough in this area. We have lost our colleague just for this reason,” she says.

Shyama used to work with Niyamat, a MGNREGS activist associated with Gram Swaraj Abhiyan that ran a MGNREGS Sahayta Kendra, a help centre for poor labourers working in projects under the Centre’s flagship rural job scheme at Manika.

Implementation of the projects leaves a lot to be desired in Manika. Too many vested interests have meant that villagers have had to share their meagre earnings with two or three power centres.

Otherwise work would dry up. So would their livelihood.

At the centre of the fraud, which Niyamat and his fellow activists Pachati Singh Bhukhan Singh, and Shyama, exposed were “mates”.

In charge of maintaining muster rolls of labourers working on a project, the mates are appointed on contract by the local administration to monitor the working of MGNREGS projects.

“Mates have connections with local contractors and it is at their behest they tamper with the rolls to inflate the number of people working on a project so that they are able to withdraw more money from block officials,” explained an activist.

The booty is shared, he also alleges, with Maoists whose involvement in the killing the state has admitted to in a report sent to the Centre today.

“Niyamat and his colleagues had exposed these fraudulent practices in several villages of Manika block. This is why they were targeted,” explains a villager, requesting anonymity.

That night after dragging Niyamat out of his home, the gang went in search of Bhukan. But since he wasn’t at home, the killers left after threatening his family.

A doctored muster roll is one aspect of the fraud. Contractors working in Manika block had apparently made a habit of withdrawing funds from local authorities under the false pretext of having completed projects they had taken up.

At the adjoining villages of Chechanda, Lamka, Lakhikala and Namda of the same block, several half-dug ponds stand testimony to this manner of corruption.

Activists at Sadhwadih village pointed out places for two ponds that were never dug. But money for these projects, they said, had been withdrawn jointly by mates and some block authorities.

And the CPI(Maoists) of the region, they allege, claimed a share too.

Latehar deputy commissioner Rahul Purwar doesn’t believe the fraud was widespread. “This kind of fraudulent practices of mates may be happening in some villages… In many villages, the mates are working honestly,” he claims.

All that Purwar has done is to hand over Rs 10,000 as compensation to Niyamat’s family. “Let the situation subside and the culprits get arrested. After this, we will see what can be done for the education of his children.”

So far, one of eight persons named in FIRs on Niyamat’s murder has been arrested. Apart from Arun Singh, the seven others named in the two FIRs are contractor Shankar Dubey, his associates Vijay Dubey, Purushottam Prasad, Vashishth Tiwari, Premchand Singh and Devas Singh, and Sudarshanji, a Maoist.

Economist and key architect of the job scheme Jean Drèze reached Manika today to find out details about Ansari’s killing. He will be camping here for a couple of days.

The Telegraph, 6 March, 2011, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110306/jsp/frontpage/story_13674032.jsp


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