Those glorifying the Naxalites as the saviour of the poor and oppressed were exposed again as the Naxalites killed a 26-year-old Sainath Naroti in the Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra.
Sainath was a 26-year-old Bachelor of Arts student in his final year, and his studies for entrance exams were going on. The Maoists took him away to the forest from his home on the pretext of talking on March 8, but true to their fashion, they afterwards shot him to death. Sainath had already passed the physical examination for police recruitment and was slated to take the test for the position of talathi.
The dastardly act snatched away an aspiring competitive exams candidate who wanted to be a Government officer and serve his community and the country and left his family in the lurch. Sainath belonged to the tribal community and had a bright and promising future ahead of him. The poor parents of the youth are now left mourning the loss of their son and waiting for justice. The only crime Sainath committed was to help the police and other Government agencies and refused to align with the anti-national forces.
The incidents happened a month ago. According to the officials, the Naxalites barged into Sainath Naroti’s home at Mardahur village on March 10 and took him away. The town falls in the Bhamaragad tehsil, the den of the naxal menace owing to its dense forests and difficult terrain. They later shot dead him dead, the official said.
The Naxalites were audacious enough to issue a statement later and asserted that they killed Sainath because he stayed in Gadchiroli and acted as an informer for the police.
Srinivas, a spokesperson for the Western Sub-zonal Divisional of Naxalites, issued the statement. On the other hand, police insisted that Sainath Naroti was not an informer but a young man pursuing the study for competitive exams.
The statement by Srinivas gives away how the so-called warriors of justice have a disdain for democratic values and administrative set-up. The statement claims that Sainath has lived in Bhamaragad and Gadchiroli for the last few years under the garb of pursuing higher education.
However, he was helping the police. He participated in the police recruitment process with the help of the police. The statement makes no bone about the intention of Naxalites and explicitly says that Sainath was killed for this reason alone.
The police have arrested a person named Devidas Gawade from Mardahur who was active in Naxal Dalam a few years ago. He reportedly quit the Naxal Dalam and served a few years in jail. After that, he is said to have worked in agriculture and the social field.
However, the statement by Srinivas advocates their case, raising a question over his credentials, and alleges that police arrested Devidas and ten other persons on a whim.
The police retorted this statement with a befitting counterstatement. According to the police version, Sainath was a poor but talented and aspiring student. He was preparing for various competitive examinations such as clerk, Talati and police department, for which he was living in Gadchiroli.
When the police department organised a recruitment drive at Gadchiroli, about 25 thousand young men and women from the vicinity participated. Were all the police informers, was the question posed by the police? Officials say Devidas alias Prakash alias Adve Mura Gavade was an accomplice of the police. He was a party in the murder of Sainath, and only he has been arrested in this murder case. None else has been even apprehended.
Even supposing that Sainath was helping the police, then what right the Maoist had to kill him for this simple reason? Is helping police and becoming a part of the nation’s mainstream such a crime that one can lose one’s life for this?
Amidst this entire administrative and criminal problem, two persons, namely Chaitu Naroti and his wife Jamni, are the ones who are going through unspeakable pain. They are the parents of Sainath and are left to languish in their sorrow. Their son, who aspired to be a policeman or similar Government officer, has been killed by Maoists, but they face the Government’s indifference to their tragedy.
They bemoan the fact that no member of the Government, from the executive branch or any public representative, has visited them to offer condolences for the death of their son.
Jan Sangharsh Samiti, an organisation from Nagpur, visited the devastated family members at their home in Mardahur village. Datta Shirke, the organisation’s president, said, “The family was sobbing over their loss and remembering every moment they had with Sainath. Sainath would frequently tell his mother that she would soon be the mother of an officer son.”
Shirke has uploaded a video of the meeting with the bereaved family, which included Sainath’s elder brother and sister, in which Sainath’s mother can be seen crying helplessly and inconsolably. The elder brother Suresh Chaitu Naroti can be seen chillingly narrating how three Naxals barged into their house and took Sainath away.
They later told Sainath’s father, Chaitu, that he would not return his son. With the help of his kith and kins, Suresh found his brother’s dead body.
In the video, titled ‘Will he get justice’ in Marathi, Shirke asks, “Sainath would tell his parents that he would be a Government officer and would look after them. Now he has gone, what about his family members? Who will look after them? How can they get justice?”
