Ranchi, Nov. 4: It is not just poverty that is driving young, tribal women out of the state. Many of the women are leaving to flee the extremists.
Confirming that teenaged tribal girls are being forcibly taken away by extremists for training and indoctrination, the National Domestic Workers? Welfare Trust claims to have rescued as many as 15 of them hailing from the interiors of Namkum block alone. Shipra Shalini, coordinator of the ?Save our Children? project of the trust, rattles off several similar cases.
Sister Emma Ekka endorses Shalini and cites the example of an 18-year-old tribal girl, who had been forced to join the Naxalites. She was lured away and trained in the use of arms, ammunition and explosives besides being forced to cook and carry out the routine chores. After a year in the forests, she finally fled when the extremists began exerting pressure on her to lure other teenaged girls, including her own sister. Returning home was out of the question because she feared for her life and believed that she would be abducted again, if not killed. She, therefore, approached the nuns and confided that she was physically abused as well. She has now been placed as a domestic help in the house of a doctor couple, the Sister informs, and is said to be happy. Mary, an animator working with the Trust, recalls the visit of a woman from Lapung two months ago. She came with her 18-year-old daughter, who had returned from Lucknow to appear at the school final examination. She had unsuccessfully tried clearing the exam earlier and had gone off to Lucknow to work. But, fair and good-looking, she was soon spotted by the extremists who demanded that she be allowed to join them. The mother panicked and brought the daughter to Ursuline Convent and requested the nuns to take care of her. A survey conducted by them in Chainpur and Lapung revealed that whichever family had three or four children, would be asked by the ultras to give up one or two teenagers for the cause of the revolution. The girls are made to join the women?s squad and are used to lure other girls to the organisation. Many families confessed that they sent the girls out so they do not have to join the rank of the rebels.
The incidence of spotting the teenagers receive a spurt in summer months when the extremists prefer to stay in villages.
Latehar police last year arrested an MCC (Maoist Communist Centre) commander along with four teenaged girls. The girls turned out to be adept at handling firearms and explosives. They had also taken part in several criminal activities. While the government wanted the girls to be sent to the remand home, the then SP wanted them rehabilitated and approached the nuns. The girls were sent to Patna but all four of them fled from the home but got arrested again at Daltonganj. All of them wanted to return home and finally it was decided to send them back. ?Two of the girls have got married but we have information that the other two have returned to the forest,? says Mary.
Not all extremists exploit the situation, say the nuns. The ultras have also tried to stop migration of women and have punished agents who posed as extremists and lured away girls. But in many other cases extremists have taken away the girls by force. ?Not all girls are sexually abused,? admits Shalini. The girls arrested from Latehar, she recalls, were in the age-group of 14 to 16 and claimed they lived with members of the women?s squad and were not abused. Almost all the male members of the squad, they said, had a partner and that?s possibly why they were spared.
