Good Number of Adivasis From Erstwhile Undivided Adilabad District

Telangana |  Suryaa Desk  | Published : Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 10:30 AM

A good number of Adivasis from erstwhile undivided Adilabad district on Friday paid homage to the Raj Gonds who were killed in the infamous Indervelli police firing on April 20, 1981. This was the 37th anniversary of the incident in which police had opened fire on unarmed aboriginal people killing 13, but unofficial accounts had put the death toll at 60.Police had made elaborate bandobast to ensure that peace was maintained at all costs. The anniversary had come in the midst of the friction going on between the aboriginal tribes on one hand and the Lambada tribe on the other with the former alleging that the latter had cornered all benefits illegally.

The ethnic people first offered homage near Ramnagar, about a kilometre and half away from the martyrs column on the outskirts of Indervelli. They later paid the homage at the column in their traditional manner amid traditional drum beats.Adilabad MP G. Nagesh, Asifabad MLA Kova Laxmi and State president of the Adivasula Hakkula Porata Samiti, also known as Tudum Debba, Soyam Bapu Rao and the president of the Indervelli Amara Veerula Ashaya Sadhana Samithi Purka Bapu Rao were among the prominent people who paid the homage. The Adivasis resented restrictive prohibitory orders being imposed in the area which also saw the market in Indervelli being closed for a better part of the day.

Unresolved issues

The police firing had taken place on a fateful Monday at Indervelli, an important business centre in the tribal heartland in Adilabad district, when the aboriginal people had gathered to attend a public meeting which was organised by the Girijana Rythu Coolie Sangham, a frontal organisation of the CPI (ML) People’s War Group of naxalites, now called CPI (Maoist).The organisers had planned to raise the voice against encroachments on their lands by Lambadas and non tribals in the Agency villages but police had denied permission for the meeting.

The message of there being no permission for the meeting failed to reach villages and the Adivasis gathered in thousands only to be fired upon by the police as things went out of hand.

Protest continues

Meanwhile, the Tudum Debba president reiterated that Lambada employees and officials will not be allowed by Adivasis to report on duty starting June 1 as a measure of their protest against the plains tribe. Addressing the aboriginal people who had gathered there, he asked resolutions to be passed to this effect in every village.








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