Home Minister Amit Shah beamed in the photograph, while Prasanna looked solemn, standing a few rows behind him. The group photograph was posted on Shah's X handle on June 23. The accompanying text quoted the home minister as saying: “The children in whose hands the Naxalites had placed guns, those children are being given books to make their future brighter.”

Home Minister Amit Shah beamed in the photograph, while Prasanna looked solemn, standing a few rows behind him.

The group photograph was posted on Shah's X handle on June 23. The accompanying text quoted the home minister as saying: “The children in whose hands the Naxalites had placed guns, those children are being given books to make their future brighter.”

But Prasanna is not a child. He is an Adivasi man in his fifties.

Hailing from a village in Bijapur district – his real name and the village's name are being withheld to protect his identity – he alleged to Scroll that he was being held captive by the police in a compound in the district headquarters where he was being forced to take skill training.

The compound that he identified functions as a rehabilitation centre for surrendered Maoists. But Prasanna denied being one. He alleged that the police had detained him for leading a peaceful protest in his village.

There were about 90 other “trainees” like him being subjected to involuntary detention at the centre, he claimed. In June, they were given new blue-coloured track suits and told: “Raipur ghumaakar laate hain, phir chhod denge” – We will take you on a trip to Raipur, after that we will let you go home.

About 60 of them were taken to the state capital by bus and made to pose for a photograph with the home minister, he said. They all came back hopeful that they would be finally allowed to go home, he added. But that did not happen.

Prasanna, however, managed to secure permission to visit his village for a few days to attend to some family work. It was during this visit that he met this reporter.

Subsequently, other detainees – some of them lower-rung Maoists who had recently surrendered to the police – shared similar accounts with Scroll. They alleged that in the guise of skill training, they were being held involuntarily in the district headquarters for long periods of time.

These accounts raise troubling questions about Chhattisgarh Police's claims of rehabilitating former Maoists by providing them skill development training.

Responding to the allegations, Jitendra Yadav, the police superintendent of Bijapur, said: “The skill training is part of the surrender and rehabilitation policy that came into effect in March 2025.”

Asked whether surrendered individuals had the option of returning to their villages without participating in the training, Yadav expressed concerns for their safety. “Returning immediately is risky,” he said, citing instances where surrendered Maoists have been targeted and killed by Maoist cadres. “This year alone, 15 civilians have lost their lives, while 35 were killed last year.”

V Suresh, the national general secretary of the People's Union for Civil Liberties, however, strongly criticised the police's method of implementing the rehabilitation scheme. “Keeping villagers in residential training centres under conditional freedom with the method adopted is nothing short of arbitrary detention,” he said.

“Poona Margham” – or a new path in Gondi – is what the police have called their new rehabilitation initiative for surrendered Maoists in Bastar. The southern region of Chhattisgarh is one of the last strongholds of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist).

Since December 2023, when the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in Chhattisgarh, the region has seen an intensification of counterinsurgency operations. In 20 months, security forces claim to have killed 445 Maoists, including several senior leaders.

Apart from the killings, the police have also claimed success in getting a large number of insurgents to surrender. In a statement released on July 21, Bastar Police said more than 1,400 Maoists had “abandoned violence and joined the social mainstream in the past 18 months”.

The statement described “Poona Margham” as “a significant step toward providing surrendered Maoist cadres with a self-reliant, dignified, and secure life”.

It said the campaign was “being implemented in a phased manner across all seven districts of the Bastar Range”. Bijapur is one of the seven districts.

The initiative appears to build on existing rehabilitation schemes for surrendered Maoists.

Since 2017, Bastar police have run a community policing programme called “Amcho Bastar Amcho Police”. Under the programme, a police campus in each district is registered as a vocational training provider with the labour department to conduct courses under the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana.

“Certificates are issued at the end of the completion of short-term courses that include masonry, tractor maintenance, agricultural skills, sewing skills and others,” explained Gaurav Pandey, assistant coordinator for the scheme in Bijapur.

One of the seven campuses in Bijapur where vocational training is provided acts as a residential rehabilitation centre for surrendered Maoists, he said. Since it became functional on February 14, about 150 people have been trained there, he added.

Ordinarily, vocational training courses run for two to three months. But since it was unsafe for the surrendered Maoists to go back home, they were being given training in several courses back to back, Pandey said.

Police superintendent Yadav said: “It's for their own good and future – to ensure they have an opportunity for gainful employment.”

On whether those who completed the training would be absorbed into jobs, he acknowledged the limitations. “It's difficult to provide immediate employment to everyone, but gradually, people find ways to put their skills to use,” he said.

Prasanna said he was being trained as a mason at the centre. Until last November, he lived as a farmer in a village deep inside the forests of Bijapur. When I visited the village recently, it was hosting the area's bustling weekly market.

“I came home just yesterday,” Prasanna told me, as he warmly shook my hands before taking his seat on a wobbly handwoven cot. He said he had been given two days of “chutti” or leave from the centre to attend to personal obligations. While he spoke, his eyes kept darting in the direction of the market to check whether personnel of the Central Reserve Paramilitary Force were out on patrol.

The CRPF rarely ventured in the area till last year, he said. But that changed when the paramilitary force decided to set up camp in Prasanna's village.

Villagers opposed the move, fearing greater militarisation of the area. Already, mortar shelling by the security forces had made it difficult for villagers to venture out to work in their farms and harvest their crops, Prasanna recalled. He, along with the sarpanch of his village, visited the nearest security camp to petition against the use of mortar shells on behalf of the villagers.

But there was no response.

The villagers then decided to stage a sit-in protest in October to prevent the CRPF from building a camp on their land, Prasanna said. Under law, the gram sabha's consent should have been taken before establishing a camp, he pointed out, but that had not happened.

Similar protests had erupted in other villages of the region under the aegis of the Mulwasi Bachao Manch, or platform to save the indigenous inhabitants. The protestors argued that the state was building roads and security camps in the region to facilitate mining, not for development. The organisation was banned in November 2024, after the state accused it of acting as a front for the Maoists.

Chhattisgarh has a long record of criminalising peaceful resistance, according to human rights groups. Adivasis living in villages where the Maoists run a parallel government are often branded Maoists by association even if they have never worked for the insurgent group.

Prasanna said he had joined the group in his early twenties, but had quit within three years, choosing to return to his family and ordinary village life. “The party did not approve of my behaviour with women cadres,” he said.

He maintained he had no engagement with the Maoists for three decades – a claim endorsed by the village sarpanch – and yet, he became a police target because of his involvement with the village protest.

One evening at the protest site, Prasanna recalled, he was getting ready to sleep when “the children began running around, shouting paika paika” – paika, which means outsider in Gondi, is often used for the police.

The entire protest site was surrounded by security personnel. A young CRPF jawan, who appeared to be leading the operation, demanded to know who was heading the protest. Prasanna stepped forward but before he could speak, the young jawan slapped him twice, he alleged.

He, along with 70 other protestors, were herded “to the farthest house” in the village where they were confined for days while the security personnel built the camp.

Once the camp was built, about 10 protesters – mostly underage children and elderly men and women – were released, Prasanna said, while he and the others were moved to the police line in Bijapur.

The police line serves as the residential quarters of the District Reserve Guard, a special anti-Naxal unit of the Chhattisgarh Police. The campus is also one of the seven designated centres for vocational training of surrendered Maoists in Bijapur.

Prasanna recalled that the campus was packed with about 200-250 villagers, including 60-70 women. Most of them were from villages under the jurisdiction of Usur, Gangaloor, and Bhairamgarh police stations.

Rakesh Potam hails from Korcholi village in Gangaloor. In January, I met him outside the Bijapur police lines. He had come looking for his 14-year-old brother Dasru Potam, who had been picked up by the District Reserve Guard in December. Along with him were the wives of Bichhem Tati and Somlu Punem, two other village men detained by the police.

The families were not allowed to meet the detained men. Potam said the policemen told him that his brother and the others were being questioned and would be released after their interrogation was over.

There was no reference to any skill training being provided to them.

Prasanna said that barring some cleaning and construction work, they were not involved in any activities – let alone vocational development. The detainees spent their days “just watching people come and go”, he added.

Bijapur police superintendent Yadav said the police line was a temporary stop for surrendered Maoists. “The number of surrenders has been very high,” he said. “Due to a lack of safe and adequate accommodation, some individuals are temporarily housed at the police line while training batches are being processed.”

Gaytari (name changed) spent four months at the police line. A former member of the Maoist militia – the lowest level in the armed wing of the insurgent group – she said women detainees like her were assigned work to clean rooms and bathrooms, clear the weeds, and cook for all the residents, including the District Reserve Guard men and women who had their quarters on the campus.

If they were found sitting idle, they would be castigated: “What are you sitting inside for? Come outside and do some work.”

She did not recall receiving any vocational training. Instead, she alleged that male personnel of the District Reserve Guard would proposition the women detainees by saying “Shaadi karegi kya?” – Will you marry me? In local parlance, this question is seen as a euphemism for seeking sexual favours. Her refusal, thankfully, did not result in any harassment, she added.

Gayatri also recalled witnessing the mental health breakdown of one of the detainees – a young man from a village in the Gangaloor area. Unable to manage his condition, the police called in his relatives and asked them to take him back till he had recovered.

Now back home, Gayatri said she continues to suffer physical weakness from the time she spent at the police line. Her younger brother questioned the logic of detaining surrendered Maoists for so long. “Chalo surrender karaya, ek mahine rakha, theek hai, par char mahine tak rakhna kaisa theek hai” – it is understandable that after making her surrender, they would keep her in detention for a month, but why extend that to four months, he said.

Gayatri remains fearful of being taken back into detention. Another young woman in the village, who had been released by the police, has been re-arrested, she said.

A month after Prasanna and 60 others from his village were taken to the police line, the police began to gradually release them in batches. By mid-December, only 12 of them remained at the police line, Prasanna said. They were presented before a group of former Maoists who had surrendered and joined the police.

Prasanna claimed the former Maoists vouched for the fact that he and the other detainees from his village had not been involved in any Naxal activity in recent years.

In late December, all 12 of them were released and allowed to return to their village. But their freedom did not last long. A few days later, policemen appeared at Prasanna's door with a warrant. Along with seven others, he was led back to Bijapur – to the same police line where he had already spent a month in confinement.

In captivity, Prasanna lost track of time. One day in March, he found himself being paraded along with about 20 others in front of the media. He said he was shocked when he heard the police officials describe them as “surrendered Maoists”.

A press note released subsequently described Prasanna as a member of the Dandkaranya Adivasi Kisan Mazdoor Sangh of the CPI (Maoist), as well as of the Mulwasi Bachao Manch. The note claimed he had several police cases against him.

Once the shock wore off, Prasanna said he began to hope that he would now be released and allowed to return home. Instead, he and the others were taken to a new location – the erstwhile campus of the Navodaya school in Bijapur, which is now being used as a residential rehabilitation centre for surrendered Maoists.

Santosh (name changed) landed up at the rehabilitation centre around the same time as Prasanna. The police had paraded him as part of a batch of 50 “surrendered Maoists” who had a collective bounty of Rs 68 lakh. They were shown holding up cheques of Rs 25,000 each.

According to several people of his village, Santosh had helped mobilise support for the Maoists a long time ago. He was no longer actively involved with the banned group, they said. And yet, he was among the 12 people from the village summoned by the commandant of the nearest security camp. Three of the 12 people were detained by the police, which declared them to be surrendered Maoists, before sending them off to the police line first, and the rehabilitation centre later.

Santosh very briefly spoke to Scroll over the phone from the rehabilitation centre. Unlike the police line where the detainees were not allowed to interact with anyone, at the rehabilitation centre, they were allowed to keep their personal phones, Prasanna explained. Even their family members could meet them even twice in a week.

The “trainees”, as they are called, are also allowed to visit their villages. “Only in emergencies – if someone is unwell or there's a serious issue,” said Prasanna.

Unlike the police line, at the rehabilitation centre, the inmates had a fixed routine. “Every morning, we do an hour of exercise, guided by an instructor who comes in to lead the session,” Prasanna said. “After that, we break for food, taking turns to cook.”

While Santosh was being trained in tractor maintenance, Prasanna was part of the group receiving training in masonry. The training lasts five hours a day, he said. “Later in the evening, we cook and then go to bed,” he said.

Sometimes the trainees are allowed to go to a nearby market to buy personal items, he added. In the eight months he has been in detention, he has gone out twice – only when permitted to.

Has anyone ever tried to escape?

“Not a single one,” he replied firmly. “The police have all our details. We are told that if anyone runs away, the next time their family sees them, it will be in a jhilli” – a plastic sheet, used to wrap up the bodies of dead insurgents.

“Where will we go?” Prasanna continued. “We'd only return to our village. But the moment the camp gets word, they will harass the entire village and pick up someone from our family. That's how it works.”

He sighed deeply. “So the idea of escaping – of running away – has long been abandoned.”

He added that they often request permission to attend to their farms, especially during the agricultural season. “But then they ask us: jail jaate to kheti karte?” Would you be farming if you were in jail?

V Suresh of PUCL said: “Coercing or compelling people to surrender under threat strikes at the very heart of civil liberties and violates the rule of law.” He added that using threats to push people into joining a government-initiated policy or programme is both ethically and legally unacceptable.

On May 15, Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai visited Bijapur to congratulate the security forces for their “successful 21-day anti-Naxal operation” in the Karregutta hills, located along the border of Bijapur district and Telangana's Mulugu district. During his visit, he stopped by the skill training centre.

As the detainees stood in line, Prasanna recalled the chief minister addressing them. “Stop working for the Maoists and live a good life by farming in your village,” he said.

Some of the detainees gathered the courage to speak up. They told the chief minister they wished to return home to their families. The chief minister assured them they would be released by May 30 – but that never happened.

Instead, in June, they were taken to Raipur and made to pose for the group photograph with the home minister.

On July 14, deputy Chief Minister Vijay Sharma visited Bijapur for a day. The detainees were presented before him. Their hopes for a final release were dashed when he told them that incidents of violence were still occurring in the villages, and that their return could lead to further trouble. They should be prepared to remain there for another two months, he said, before leaving.

July marked the eighth month of Prasanna's detention. “Even if they release us two months from now, the farming season will be long over,” he said with a sigh. “How will my family manage?”

Source: Scroll
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