Homeward bound: Jhina Hikaka with his wife Kaushalya after being freed

The irony is stark. Odisha legislator Jhina Hikaka feels “claustrophobic” in his well-guarded official residence. “It seems as if I have been chained,” says Hikaka.

Indeed, it looks as if the 36-year-old tribal MLA from Laxmipur constituency in southern Odisha has been held captive in his own house. Eleven policemen guard him round the clock. His six-room apartment is like a fortress. A security guard at the front door wants to know your business. Inside, there are more armed guards in the lobby.

Days after the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) member was released by Maoist abductors, Hikaka is still to taste freedom. “The security was provided by the government after I was released by the Maoists,” says Hikaka, wearing a white T-shirt and a pair of bermuda shorts, in his first detailed interview after the release. Before he was kidnapped in March, just one police officer in plainclothes guarded him.

Hikaka is still shaky about his 33 days in captivity. He recalls how it all began. He was picked up by the Maoists at around 1.30am on March 24 when he was barely two kilometres from his village.

“Around 30 armed men stopped my car. My driver and security officer were ordered out. Our cellphones were taken away. Then I was taken into the jungle.” The trek was long and arduous. After walking for over 30 kilometres through a hilly terrain, he was brought to a Maoist camp. “They had told me that they would let me go after having discussions with their leaders. But the days passed, and no discussion took place. I started getting worried,” says Hikaka, who was provided with a lungi, a towel and a shawl at the camp.

Some days later, he was told by the Maoists that they had placed their demands before the government. But when he heard that the government had not responded, he wrote a letter to chief minister Naveen Patnaik, alleging that his abduction was not being taken up seriously because he was a tribal. “I was very frustrated and depressed when I wrote the letter.”

When the negotiations did not work out, the rebels told him they would take up the matter with the praja — or people’s court. On April 25, he learnt that he was being released. “But funnily, my first thought was how I’d walk all that way back to village,” he says with a smile.

A day later, he was left near a mango orchard in Balipeta where his wife Kaushalya and advocate Nihar Ranjan Patnaik were waiting for him. Hikaka was overwhelmed when he saw his wife. “I was shocked to see that she’d turned so frail in a month,” he says. The MLA too lost 8kg in the jungles. “I wanted to hug him but didn’t get a chance in the presence of hundreds of villagers who’d come to greet him,” adds Kaushalya.

After his release, Hikaka was asked to move to Bhubaneswar for security reasons. “But I am waiting to go back to my village and my constituency,” Hikaka, who belongs to Koraput district’s Dumuripadar village, stresses.

That’s not going to be easy. In fact, even his tenure as an MLA is uncertain. His abductors had taken a written undertaking from him that he would resign as an MLA and sever ties with his party after his release. But 17 days since his return, Hikaka is still a legislator. “The Maoists did not give any deadline. I haven’t discussed the issue with my senior party members yet,” he explains.

But there are rumours that he may be kidnapped again if he doesn’t resign. There all kinds of stories in Odisha about the abduction, with some holding that Hikaka was picked up because a deal between the ruling BJD and the Maoist-backed Chasi Mulia Adivasi Sangh (CMAS) fell through.

The Opposition has claimed that the tribals helped the BJD get their candidate elected in the Koraput Zilla Parishad elections in March this year. In return, it further alleged, the government had agreed to the CMAS’s 10 demands — which included leniency.

The BJD has denied that there was a deal — and Hikaka echoes that. “We did not have any such agreement with the CMAS.”

Hikaka is a quiet man. Not fluent in Hindi or English, his answers are brief. A Kui tribal, he is the only son of his parents, his railway gangman father and homemaker mother.

After finishing high school from Laxmipur, he graduated in political science from V.D. College in Jeypore in 1999. He began working as a community organiser in the Centre-funded District Rural Development Agency in Koraput, where he worked for 10 years, while doing a masters degree in mass communication and sociology from the Indira Gandhi National Open University.

He entered politics in his thirties. He was given a ticket for the first time in the 2009 Assembly election.

Kaushalya didn’t want Hikaka to join politics, convinced that it was a dirty world. But Hikaka, who is also a qualified lawyer, knew his calling. “I had to be either a politician or a community worker — my effort has always been to come closer to my own people,” he says.

But his constituents differ. Though he is popular in the Laxmipur and Dasmantpur blocks of his constituency, villagers in the other two blocks — Narayanpatna and Ban-dhugaon — complain that he hasn’t done much for them. “We haven’t seen him ever in our village,” alleges Rassai Nachika, a villager in Narayanpatna.

Tilsui Hulka, a farmer in Basnaput village, is more scathing. “There is a single primary healthcare centre with just one doctor. Schools have no teachers. Acres of cultivable land lie barren because of lack of irrigation facilities. There are barely any roads in the village. He has not worked for our development,” he says.

Hikaka doesn’t deny the charges, but holds the Maoists responsible for the lack of development. “These are the blocks most affected by the Maoists. A sum of Rs 15 crore is lying unused because the Maoists and the CMAS don’t allow development projects,” he holds.

He adds that he did try to bring up the issue during his days in the jungles. “I tried to convince them but they don’t want development.”

At one point, Hikaka even asked the Maoists to give up the gun. “But they didn’t listen,” he rues.

Kaushalya, his wife of 10 years, has been sitting quietly all this while. She now gets up to receive guests who’ve come from the neighbouring Malkangiri district. Pleasantries are exchanged, and then the guests want to know what he ate in the Maoist camp.

“I was served roti and tomato chutney for breakfast, and rice and daal for lunch and dinner,” he says, adding that the rebels did not hurt him in any way.

Since his return, Hikaka and his wife have barely got any time to spend with each other because of the crowds of visitors. The two, however, did manage to go to Puri to pray at the Jagannath temple there. “We went also to Chilika to see the dolphins. The kids were very happy,” says Hikaka, whose sons, Rohit and Kiran, are seven and four, respectively.

Right now, he is thinking of getting back to work. He doesn’t know when that’s going to happen. He admits that he fears for his life. “But that will not stop me from working for the people,” he says.