India: Fact-finding team exposes police brutality and rights violations in Dhinkia over JSW land acquisition protests
" Stop the JSW project immediately and withdraw police force from the villages, says Fact Finding Team", 31 January 2022
A joint team of human right organisations visited Dhinkia and the surrounding villages from January 29 to 31. This coastal region of Jagatsinghpur district in Odisha is the place where forcible land acquisition for Jindal Steel Works by the Odisha government has resulted in brutal police repression on the protesting villagers.
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The team also met Debendra Swain and Narendra Mohanty who were arrested on January 14 and are in the sub divisional jail in Kujanga. They were arrested along with some other protesting villagers. The police FIR has names of 18 people and 500 “others”.
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more than 200 women and children have been injured in the police lathi-charge of January 14. Although more than two weeks has passed since this incident, villagers continue to live in terror. Many men are still in the forests fearing arrest. The police continue to visit peoples’ houses, especially after sunset.
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He asserted on behalf of the team that withdrawal of police force from the areas has to take place immediately. Tapas Chakrabarty said that the entire operations of the Odisha government aimed to help JSW is a travesty of justice and violation of the FRA, Land Acquisition Act and several other laws of the land. Not less than 50, 000 people will lose their livelihood as there is a huge number of landless people dependent on betel cultivation.
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People’s Right to Life is violated daily.
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A total of 1193.974 Ha of land has been allotted to the Jindal Steel and works (JSW) Utkal steel ltd. by the Odisha Industrial and Infrastructure development corporation (IDCO) for the development of a steel plant of 13.2 MTPA, 900MW captive electricity plant, 10MTPA cement plant and a captive port of 52 million tons transport capacity. Out of which non-forest land is 137.64 Ha. The bone of contention is this non-forest land and a large part of the forest land where the villagers have been cultivating betel, other fruits (eg. Cashew) and paddy for generations.