IT is seven years since the anti-Christian violence unleashed by the Hindutva forces engulfed Kandhamal. But the victims are yet to receive justice. Violence targeted at minorities inevitably leads to a deterioration in their standards of living which sometimes takes decades to overcome. This is apart from the trauma and scars left by the fear and terror of those dark days which remain to haunt survivors. This gets intensified when the State and the criminal justice system fail to deliver on compensation, rehabilitation, and most importantly on punishment to those responsible. Seeking justice, a delegation of the Kandhamal Committee for Justice and Peace met the President of India on September 7, accompanied by Brinda Karat, Mani Shankar Aiyar and Kavitha Krishnan. This followed a large rally in Raikia in Kandhamal district, organised by the Committee, which was addressed by the three leaders along with others including Suresh Panigrahi of the Odisha CPI(M) State Secretariat. The truth is that although on the surface things look better, the BJD government seems to be deliberately going slow in taking action against the RSS even though it ended its coalition with BJP in 2009. In the 2014 Assembly elections, the Hindutva forces suffered a resounding defeat in this district losing all the three ST reserved Assembly constituencies. In the 2009 elections, the BJP had put up a man, accused in two cases of murder of Christians and another ten cases of arson and violence. Manoj Pradhan was elected from inside jail. BJP reaped the harvest of the blood of innocents. Pradhan came out of jail within weeks of his election and it was an open secret that he used his clout to sabotage the processes of justice, intimidating witnesses, instructing the police to go slow in the cases. In 2014, there are one Congress MLA and two of the BJD. But even though the people of this district dealt a stunning blow to the RSS-BJP combine, the political dispensation has ignored their plight. In fact, the Committee has publicly said that Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has refused their requests to give time even to meet a delegation. It would, therefore, be quite wrong to assume that the agenda of communal polarisation has weakened following the electoral defeat. Leaders of RSS organisations were freed within months of their arrest, 11,000 rioters had been given anticipatory bail. They continue their toxic agenda of dividing equally poor communities, majority of whom are below the poverty line, as they had done earlier, mobilising the largely tribal Kui community against the dalit Panas community ostensibly against the latter's demand for inclusion in the ST list but in reality targeting the dalits on a communal agenda as around 20 per cent of them are Christians. Tribals from the Kuisamaj who are Christian are also targets. One important aim of BJP, RSS and its front organisations was to ensure that their people who had led and instigated the mobs in 2008 would be saved from punishment, to be available for the furthering of the communal agenda. In this they have largely succeeded. They have literally got away with murder. The facts speak for themselves: first take the issue of compensation. It was said at the time that over 6,000 houses were burnt. The government brought this figure down to 4,818. Surveys of the extent of damage were made, much like in Gujarat, when the inmates were not present and were living in the squalor of the 14 relief camps. It was estimated at the time that there were over 56,000 men, women and children, all Christians who had to flee their homes. They lost all their belongings but the compensation package did not include an inventory of the goods burnt. The belongings of the poor are assumed to have no value. For a house partially damaged, the compensation was just Rs 20,000 from the state government and another Rs 10,000 from the central government. For a fully damaged home, the compensation was Rs 50,000 from the state and Rs 30,000 from the Centre. The price of building materials is so high, that with this measly amount, the survivors could not rebuild their homes, but just makeshift structures. Today, they are there for all to see, dotting the landscape of this beautiful region, asbestos or tin roofs over un-plastered, half-brick walls. No window or door frames, no grills for security, the evidence of callousness. The state government in all these years has given only Rs 13 crore as compensation for damaged houses. A petition filed on behalf of the survivors is pending before the Supreme Court. Scores of churches and educational institutions were destroyed. The only positive aspect is that whereas the Gujarat government is still fighting a case in the Supreme Court against giving compensation to rebuild the large number of mosques that were destroyed across that state, in Odisha the BJD government, in principle, accepted the Supreme Court suggestion for compensation for damage to churches in Kandhamal, though the amount given was negligible. Or take the issue of registration and charge-sheeting of cases and arrests of the accused. Shockingly around 11,000 rioters were given anticipatory bail, to which there was no objection from the police. Over 3,000 complaints were filed with the police. But the police registered only 828 cases. Out of these only 605 were charge-sheeted, two of them were cases of rape. The pathetic level of investigation can be gauged from the fact that in 2015, there are still 228 cases pending investigation. Independent enquiries at the time showed that between 80 and 100 were killed, but the government registered only 39 dead, of which two were policemen and three were rioters. From the start the effort was to minimise the extent of the crime. The victims fared no better with the courts. In response to the Supreme Court orders on a petition filed by Orissa Archbishop Rafael Cheenath, two fast-track courts were set up and started functioning after March 2009. Meanwhile, the BJP used its powers in government to do everything to sabotage the process and to intimidate the witnesses. As a result, the conviction rate is extremely low in all the cases. The fast-track cases were wound up in 2010 with very poor results. According to Father Dibya Pariccha, the indefatigable activist-advocate who along with his small team, defying all threats has been fighting the battle for justice in Kandhamal, there have been convictions in only two cases of murder. Ten accused have been given the life sentence. But today each and every one of them is out on bail. The other 33 cases of murder of Christians have been closed for "lack of evidence". In other cases, the more serious charges have been closed and punishment given on lesser charges. 315 cases were closed due to "lack of evidence" and 4,232 accused were acquitted. There have been convictions in only 73 cases of the 605 charge-sheeted. 492 persons were sentenced for lesser offences, but they are all out on bail. Thus, in August 2015, after one of the worst carnages against the Christian community there is only one man in jail, the convict in the rape of the nun. Even in this case, the other two convicted were given bail and are now absconding. It is as though nothing happened. Among the crowds in Raikia, there were seven women standing to one side. These are the wives of the men, four Adivasi and three Dalits, all Christian, who have been convicted of the murder of Lakshamananda Saraswati. He was the leader of the often violent and hate-filled anti-conversion campaign against the Christian community in this part of Odisha. His murder was the pretext for the carnage. Pretext because the Maoists had already declared proudly that it was they who had killed Lakshmananda and four of his followers, including a woman. Yet the Hindutva forces targeted the Christian community after his murder, and unleashed unprecedented violence against them. The women have large families to manage from between four to six children each, except for the youngest who has two children. They work as agricultural workers during the season for Rs 100 a day or eke out a living through the collection of minor forest produce, earning on an average a small sum of Rs 50 or 60 a day. I tell them that I have met their husbands in jail that morning. They smile for a second and shake my hand. Their words are translated for me: How much longer before we can see the face of justice? The women have a dignity in their desperation. Much like their husbands, the men I had met that morning. They had walked into the room, six of them. It was the jailor's office in the Phulbani District Central jail in Kandhamal district of Odisha. There was not much time to talk. Just an expression of solidarity from us. An appeal for help from them. A few words. A few tears, quickly suppressed. They said that even the "babas" had sent them messages in jail saying that they knew they were not guilty. They stood straight when they spoke. I looked at the tallest of them. I recalled what I had read in that atrocious judgement holding them guilty. The police-tutored witness had said in response to a question - "I saw a tall, black man" ...a tall black man, a description which would fit every third Indian man, but it was enough to lock him and the others up on equally flimsy grounds for seven years for a crime they have not committed. I was asked why I had gone to meet men convicted of murder. Would it not give a wrong message of approval? The answer is simple: I went because they are innocent. This is a case where the law has taken a terribly wrong course. You need just to read the appalling judgement of the lower court to believe as I do that these men are innocent. Quite recently, (June 25, 2015) one of the police officers who was part of the investigating team had testified before the Naidu Commission, set up to inquire into the reasons for the riots, that documents that have been used by the prosecution to put forward the concocted theory of a conspiracy by Christians to murder Lakshmananda are false. This was a register supposedly from the Betticola church which had been given to the police by a BJP leader Ashok Sahu and quoted in the judgement as proof of the conspiracy. A forensic report now available shows that the signatures on the register are forged. Yet neither the state government nor the police have prosecuted Sahu for cheating the court, leave alone recognising that it knocks the bottom out of the case of conspiracy. The officer also informed the Commission that his investigations of the charge that the Christian organisations were funding a conspiracy were found to be false. The entire case of a conspiracy is itself a conspiracy to defame the community and arrest innocent people. The appeal is currently before the High Court. But why the double standards? Why give bail to the killers and arsonists and deny bail to those you know to be innocent? These questions haunt you when you visit Kandhamal. The Kandhamal seven and their families need solidarity. Here are their names: Durjadhan Majhi, Goranath Chalan Seth, Buddhuadeb Nayak, Vijay Kumar Sunsat, Bhaskar Majhi, Sanatan Majhi, and Munda Bara Majhi. Remember them every time you think of Indian democracy. Free the Kandhamal Seven. (END)