Muthanga verdict: whose death counts?

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The Muthanga struggle exposed how Keralam’s much-vaunted development story ran up against a harder truth: its Adivasis had waited decades for the land the government had promised but never delivered, and when they finally asserted that right, the government moved to silence them. | Photo Credit: Special arrangement

On July 31, the Principal Sessions Court in Wayanad delivered its verdict in the Muthanga case. The Muthanga agitation was a land occupation from early January to February 19 in 2003 at the Muthanga Wildlife Sanctuary, led by the Adivasi Gothra Maha Sabha (AGMS) under C.K. Janu and M. Geethanandan, demanding the government to fulfil its 2001 promise to distribute land to landless Adivasi families. On February 19, the government evacuated the protesters through police action, in which one Adivasi and one policeman died. The court found only one man, Ashokan, who has since died, responsible for constable Vinod’s death; the other 56 who were accused were held not guilty. Four leaders, including Mr. Geethanandan, were convicted on a conspiracy charge related to the assault on a surviving officer and sentenced to five years’ rigorous imprisonment. On August 21, the Kerala High Court suspended their sentences and granted them bail pending appeal.

However, this case has effectively buried the death of Jogi, an Adivasi man killed on the same morning, in what officials termed as a ‘death in police operation’. In the judgment’s opening statement, Jogi appears not as a victim but as one of the accused, alleged to have tortured hostages “under the direction of Geethanandan” and to have caused, with others, Vinod’s death. His death entered the file in an adversarial role, before any question of his own killing was raised.

The Muthanga struggle exposed how Keralam’s much-vaunted development story ran up against a harder truth: its Adivasis had waited decades for the land the government had promised but never delivered, and when they finally asserted that right, the government moved to silence them. Twenty-three years produced a trial, 47 witnesses and a 217-page judgment for Vinod’s death. For Jogi, they produced nothing — not a charge, a witness, or a line of inquiry.

The questions this trial was asked to settle were drawn up in the 2004 chargesheet. It asks who conspired against Vinod, who assaulted the officers and who caused his death. It does not address Jogi’s death. This silence was fixed in place when investigators first decided what the case would and would not be about.

The special prosecutor told the media that Jogi’s death fell outside what the CBI had been asked to investigate, since police were “discharging their official duties” that day. That may describe the case’s legal boundaries. But it is also an admission that those boundaries were drawn to leave Jogi out from the start. An Adivasi died in police action during an Adivasi movement, and his death was absorbed into a file built to answer for everything except that.

This raises a further question: who was heard in court? Of the 47 prosecution witnesses, roughly half were police, forest officials or investigators; none were Adivasis. The defence, representing the 57 accused, could produce only a single witness, whose testimony concerned the movement’s welfare work, and not the eviction itself. When defence lawyers asked a police witness whether the eviction team had set fire to huts and beaten Adivasis as they fled, the answer was a flat no. No one from the community was in court to say otherwise.

It would be easy to read the Muthanga incident as standard police action against protesters, but the reality is more revealing. Vinod came from a Dalit family, and so did Geethanandan. The line the law drew that day was not about community; it was about who wore a uniform and who did not. The judgment recommends compensation for Vinod’s family and the two surviving officers; it recommends nothing for Jogi’s family, because the rule being applied was never going to cover him. In the end, recognition followed the government’s chain of command — not who was harmed, and not who held the stronger claim to the land that started it all.

To give Jogi justice, no one needs to reopen the case. The government just needs to formally ask what happened to him. Whether a magisterial inquiry was held in 2003 is a simple question no one has answered in public. Moreover, nothing in this verdict stops Jogi’s family from claiming compensation under the State’s scheme for victims of police violence. He was included in the case only to be blamed, never accounted for.

Muthanga happened under a Congress-led government. Two decades on, Keralam is again governed by another Congress-led government, and it carries the responsibility its predecessor left behind. Adivasis had come to Muthanga in 2003 because of a promise the government never kept. That promise is still unkept.

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