Jharkhand Janadhikar Mahasabha, a coalition of civil society organisations aiming to defend people’s rights, has decided to take up the cause of a tribal “falsely implicated” in an old Maoist case and facing property attachment.

The Mahasabha member Dinesh Murmu said that they will be filing a writ petition in Jharkhand High Court against how security forces ‘cooked up’ cases to implicate illiterate tribals in Maoist cases.

“We had raised the case of Birsa Majhi earlier and now we have detected the case of Sanjay Majhi, 50,, an illiterate tribal of Lalgarh village under Gomia block of Bokaro district who has been falsely implicated in a Maoist case and declared an absconder, while he keeps living his daily life in his village, and threatened with property attachment without any prior notice. We will be filing a petition in Jharkhand High Court in this connection,” said Murmu.

The Mahasabha has also tweeted the issue tagging it to chief minister Hemant Soren claiming that “on December 27, 2021, Sanjay Majhi was informed by the local police that there was a warrant of property attachment against him in a Maoist case of 2014. He was clueless about it. Interestingly, as the police declared him absconding in this case (he has no idea about), he has been regularly attending the hearing of another case in the local court.”

The tribal has also approached Bokaro superintendent of police, Chandan Jha on Wednesday afternoon to stop the property attachment and remove his name from the case as he is neither associated with Maoists nor was involved in the incident.

“He is scared that he will be arrested or his belongings are confiscated,” said Murmu, adding that they have detected over 30 such cases across Jharkhand in which tribals have been “falsely implicated” in Maoist cases.

The petition to Bokaro superintendent of police mentions that the local thana officer on December 27 asked him to come to the police station and when he reached the thana he was told that a property attachment notice has been issued in connection with an October 2014 incident where Maoists had blown up a rail track in Mahuatand and his name has been linked with the incident.

When he told the local thana officials that he was unaware about the old incident that he has not received any notice in connection with the case and that he had been living in his village.

The petition also informs the Bokaro SP that he was accused in a coal theft incident of 2013 (in Gomia thana) and got an interim bail in 2014 and since then had been regularly making attendance at the Bermo sub-divisional court and attending the case. The last time he attended the case was in December 2021.

“How it is possible that I would be declared an absconder in a case (which I am unaware of) when I am attending regularly the court in connection with another case,” the petitioner asks.

Several attempts to contact the Bokaro superintendent of police, Chandan Jha on his official number went unanswered.