In the three weeks after botched sterilisations killed 13 women in Bilaspur district, the Chhattisgarh government has sacked the surgeon responsible for the tubectomies, ensured the arrest of the drug manufacturers who supplied medicines infested with rat poison, and appointed a judicial commission to investigate the case.
But activists in the district are not sure if the victims and survivors of the tragedy will see justice all the way through.
The one-member inquiry commission, they say, has made no real efforts to collect the testimonies of the survivors since it was appointed on November 14. Anita Jha, the retired district and sessions judge in charge of the inquiry, has so far made just one field visit. She also does not sit in the office where she is supposed to conduct the inquiry, say activists.
Half-hearted attempts
The aim of the judicial commission is to investigate the circumstances that led to the deaths and whether the doctors and camp organisers followed due protocol for the tubectomies. On November 17, three days after the commission was appointed, Jha visited the hospital in Pendari village where a sterilisation camp led to 12 of the 13 deaths.
Since then, the commission seems to have placed all the responsibility of reporting grievances on the survivors. Any individual or organisation wishing to record a testimonial is expected to file an affidavit and submit it at the commission’s office in Bilaspur city.
“The commission has published notices in Hindi in the local newspapers to inform the public about the procedure for filing the affidavit, but how do they expect illiterate people in villages to access this information?” said a field worker from Bilaspur district, speaking to Scroll.in on condition of anonymity.
Besides the 13 deaths, the botched surgeries in at least four different family planning camps left more than 130 women seriously ill. All of them come from poverty-stricken families who opted for the tubectomies largely for the monetary compensation they were given. “Despite this, the commission expects these villagers to bear the cost of the stamp papers for the affidavits and travel to the city to submit them,” said the field worker.
Locked office
To top this, Jha is not to be found at the inquiry commission’s office, say activists. The office – whose address has been published in the newspaper notifications as the place where affidavits are to be submitted – is in Bilaspur city’s New Composite Building, while Jha has been sitting at Ciruit House, a kind of rest house a kilometre away.
Satyabhama Awasthi, a social worker from the city who visited the commission’s office, claims that the gate at the building’s main entrance appears locked all day.
The locked gate of the commission’s office. Photo: Satyabhama Awasthi
“When I visited the office, the guard directed me to a different gate for entry, but the main gate under the actual signboard of the commission remains locked,” said Awasthi. “Anyone coming to file an affidavit would think the office is shut.”
Inside the office, it is Jha’s secretary Nirmal Tigga, an additional collector by rank, who sits to accept people’s submissions. December 8 is the last day for filing affidavits, but Awasthi says not a single one has been submitted so far.
Despite several attempts, Scroll.in could not get in touch with Jha for comment.
Dubious history
While the outcome of the Jha commission is awaited, the history of judicial commissions across India – and in Chhattisgarh in particular – has left many sceptical.
In 2011, soon after scores of houses were attacked and torched in the villages of Tadmetla, Morpalli and Timmapuram in Dantewada – allegedly by security forces – a judicial commission was appointed to look into the matter. More than three years down the line, the commission’s inquiry is still incomplete. “In the case of Tadmetla, the local superintendent of police was initially transferred out of the area for the sake of a fair probe, but the same officer is now back and has been given a higher post,” said Sudha Bharadwaj, a human rights lawyer based in Bilaspur.
Similarly, a commission set up to probe the killing of eight villagers in Edesmeta, Bijapur district, in May 2013 has also not submitted its report yet.
Anita Jha, who is now in charge of investigating the Bilaspur sterilisation deaths, has her own previous record to answer for. In 2012, she was put in charge of a commission to probe the alleged fake encounter of Meena Khalkho, a 16-year-old tribal girl from Sarguja district.
“Because the Jha commission was appointed, a magisterial inquiry that would have looked into the Meena Khalko case was cancelled,” said Bharadwaj. “But till today, the commission has not submitted its report.”
