Self-styled pathalgadi leader from Khunti district Yusuf Purty was hiding at Burugulikera village of West Singhbhum district where seven tribal men were beheaded last month allegedly by pathalgadi supporters, local residents say.

Purty, who was also accused in the kidnap of guards employed at then MP Karia Munda’s house and in the Khunti gang-rape case in mid-2018, was traceless since then. Six people had been convicted in the rape case, in which five NGO workers were abducted and assaulted.

Pathalgadi is a Munda tribal practice of erecting stone slabs for a number of things, including marking village boundaries. In 2017-18, the practice was tweaked by tribal villages mostly in Khunti district to assert their rights of self-rule as guaranteed under the Constitution. The movement had sparked violence.

Police had called the movement an act of rebellion against the State, and booked thousands of people for sedition. The Hemant Soren government, in one of its first decisions after coming to power in December last year, had quashed those FIRs.

Now, villagers of Burugulikera, a predominantly Munda tribal village under Gulikera panchayat in the Gudri police station limits, some 150km south of Jamshedpur, are coming up to say Purty had been hiding at the house of Raisingh Burh, the husband of former village mukhiya Mukta Horo, for over a year.

Asked for comment, additional director-general of police (ADG, operations) and state police spokesperson M.L. Meena said: “At the moment we are yet to establish if Yusuf Purty was present in Burugulikera.”

Tribal rights activist Dayamani Barla meets a victim’s family

Villagers had seen Purty at Raisingh’s house, said Nathuram Burh. Nathuram is the elder brother of James Burh, the deputy mukhiya of Burugulikera who was one of the seven beheaded.

“Purty was instrumental in arranging the training on the lessons of the Sati-Pati cult,” Nathuram told The Telegraph, referring to the cult of autonomous self-rule with origins in Valsad, Gujarat, that the pathalgadi movement in Jharkhand had been inspired by.

The Telegraph had reported the day police recovered the decapitated bodies of the seven villagers from a forest that Raisingh and many others in Burugulikera supported the Sati-Pati cult, whose founder Keshri Sinh believed that natural resources such as forests, land and rivers were gifted by Queen Victoria to him, and advised people to dissociate themselves with any activity of the state and central governments.

Purty distributed photographs of the cult’s founder Keshri Sinh among villagers, Nathuram said.

“Purty used to visit Gujarat regularly. He was instrumental in asking villagers to forego government schemes and surrender their Aadhaar and ration cards. My brother and few other villagers objected when asked to surrender their khatiyan (land records). This created a rift,” Nathuram said.

Broken bicycles bear testimony to the clashes that broke out in the village between pro and anti-pathalgadi residents

Manohar Burh, younger brother of another victim Nirmal Burh, said they had also refused to surrender the khatiyan.

“We grow paddy on our land and also collect resin for lac from our trees. My brother Nirmal did not want to part with our khatiyan. This fuelled tension. We came to know that the gram sabha had called my brother and eight others to ransack the houses of Raisingh Burh and a few other villagers. That meeting ended in their brutal murders,” Manohar said.

Ranchi-based tribal rights activist Dayamani Barla, who visited Burugulikera on Friday, asked for a probe into the Gujarat angle.

“We interacted with the families of victims and the accused. The village was always united and peaceful, in the past they even collected money to support government schoolteachers. It was only after the Gujarat cult appeared in the village that differences arose between villagers. I would like the police to probe this angle,” said Barla, convener of the Adivasi Moolvasi Astitva Raksha Manch.

The police admitted the Gujarat angle.

“We have heard about a cult from Gujarat that had spread to villagers in Burugulikera,” ADG Meena said. “We also heard people from this cult giving training to villagers in Khunti. We are looking into it. The SIT (special investigation team) probing the massacre is yet to submit its report.”