03, Nov 2015

Pavan Dahat
RAIPUR, November 3, 2015
The Bastar police filed six cases of Maoist violence against him earlier this year and clapped him in jail. But courts in Sukma and Dantewada districts acquitted him, hardly eight months later.
Ayata Mandavi, a popular tribal activist of Bade Gurbe village in Sukma district and a close aide of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Soni Sori, is still being hounded by the Bastar police who have threatened with more such cases him if he joins the AAP. “I was freed from jail on October 23, but I could not stay at home for more than two days because I was getting constant calls from the Kukanar police, who ask me to come to the station. The police say Bastar Inspector-General of Police S.R.P. Kalluri has ordered them to do so. They say that even if a pit is dug in Kukanar by Naxals, they will implicate me in it,” Mr. Mandavi told The Hindu.
Mr. Mandavi is scared to go the station, fearing more cases.
“I have been forced to live in fear despite the acquittal by the courts. I am sleeping at my neighbours’ houses. How can I trust them [the police] after facing six false? I could not even go to the funeral of one of my relatives at Jagdalpur,” he said.