Soni Sori

Soni Sori (born c. 1975 After release from prison, Sori began campaigning for the rights of those caught up in the conflict between Maoist insurgents and the government, in particular criticising police violence against tribespeople in the region.

Sori is a member of Aam Aadmi Party on whose ticket she unsuccessfully contested the 2014 general elections from Bastar, but lost to Dinesh Kashyap of the BJP.

In 2018, Sori won the 2018 Front Line Defenders award.

Early life

Soni Sori was born to Munda Ram, a former Indian National Congress leader who served as the sarpanch (elected village headman) of Bade Bedma village for over a decade. Her brother Sukhdev and his wife were also elected to the panchayat (village council) as Congress representatives. Two of her uncles were also Congress leaders, who served as MLAs. Her cousin Amrita Sori is Deputy Superintendent of Police in Jagdalpur, the headquarters of Bastar district.

Sori's family owns large tracts of lands in Dantewada district. In the 2010s, the Naxals forbade her relatives from cultivating their land. He was given Rs. 80,000 as compensation. Sori's mother, a housewife, died in 2012. Along with others, charges were framed against Sori for rioting at Kuakonda police station. On 29 May 2013, she was granted bail by a judicial magistrate.

In July 2010, warrants were first issued against Soni, along with her husband and nephew, for an attack on a local Indian National Congress leader, Avdesh Gautam. In the attack, Gautam escaped harm, but his son was injured. The Indian Express wrote that "evidence suggests both Sori and Futane were not involved in the attack", but that SRP Kalluri used the charges to pressure them to become informers. The cable stated that a senior representative from Essar, a major industrial company with large mining and steel-related facilities in Chhattisgarh, told a representative of the Congenoff (Consul General Office) that the company pays the Maoists "a significant amount" not to harm or interfere with their operations. The police stated the steel company was paying the Maoists to buy peace and safeguard its iron ore slurry pipeline from Dantewada.

Arrest and torture while in custody

On 10 September 2011, Ankit Garg, SP, Dantewada announced the arrests of Essar contractor B K Lala and Maoist conduit Lingaram Kodapi (Sori's nephew). The police, Garg said, arrested them on 9 September when Lala was handing over 1.5 million to Kodapi at Palnar market, while Sori and Maoist commanders Vinod and Bhadru "escaped" from the spot. Essar GM DVCS Verma was also arrested. Soni Sori escaped and fled to Delhi. It was also alleged that Sori was trying to collect the levy under the pretext of being a Maoist. After her arrest, on the same day, she was produced before Saket (Delhi) Sessions Court before a Duty Magistrate and was sent to judicial custody. She was booked under various sections including extortion, criminal conspiracy and unlawful activities. On 11 November 2013, she was granted an interim bail during the pendency of her bail application as Chhattisgarh Police could not aid the Supreme Court of India with the records at that time. Her bail applications would be heard on merits on 3 December 2013. She has been ordered not to stay in Chhattisgarh and weekly report to Police in Delhi.

Despite Soni Sori's statement to a court that she feared for her safety, she was transferred to the custody of Chhattisgarh state police in Dantewada. at the orders of then-district police superintendent Ankit Garg. She wrote to her lawyer that she had been forced to stand naked while "(Superintendent of Police) Ankit Garg was watching me, sitting on his chair... While looking at my body, he abused me in filthy language and humiliated me." She alleged that he then sent three men into the room to sexually assault her.

Sori was subsequently hospitalized at Kolkata Medical College Hospital, where doctors removed stones that had been inserted into her vagina and rectum. A review by the Indian Express found the medical reports on the issue to be inconsistent, noting that government doctors had not previously noted the stones in their report after an X-ray and that the Kolkata doctors had not noted any tearing or discharge as might be expected.

Reactions

Government The Chhattisgarh government submitted to the Supreme Court of India that the entire allegation was being orchestrated by certain vested interests to malign the Chhattisgarh Police.

Gautam, the Indian National Congress leader whose house was attacked in July 2010, said that he felt sorry for her as human rights activists were using her and this had made the case more complex. In January 2012, Human Rights Watch called on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to launch an independent probe, criticizing the failure of the Chhattisgarh government to begin an investigation and the lack of inquiries by the national government. After being refused by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences the previous day, Sori was later admitted to the hospital on 10 May for treatment. She was found to be suffering from severe blisters in her genital area, and a government inquiry was instituted to learn why the hospital had initially refused her.

However, in an interview, Sori claimed that while she was in jail, no political party and leader came forward to help her.

Press Rahul Pandita of OPEN wrote that "there is good reason to believe that the stories in circulation about her are a complex web of lies and falsehood systematically spread over the past two years by the state machinery", and compared the case to George Orwell's novel 1984. It was reported that state leaders of Aam Aadmi Party were reluctant to accept Sori as a candidate. It was thought that charges against her might hurt party's vote in the Chhattisgarh. Finally in their sixth list, AAP announced Sori as their candidate from the Bastar constituency. Agnivesh asked the Naxalites to help Sori win the elections. The north regional committee of the CPI(Maoist)'s Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee has issued a statement opposing the polls and appealing to people to boycott Sori, while Maoists in Darbha and Katekalyan have asked people to vote for her. She lost the 2014 General election contesting from Bastar, to Dinesh Kashyap of the BJP.

2016 attack

In February 2016, she was attacked with a chemical substance by unidentified people in Dantewada district. She suffered from a swollen face and was admitted to the hospital; the doctors were unable to identify the chemical used in the attack. She has also been criticised by the local administration of Chhattisgarh for staging attacks to gain media attention. Areeb Ahmad, a PM Rural Development Fellow in Bastar questioned Sori's claims and alleged that the attack was stage-managed to create controversy before PM's visit to Chhattisgarh. Soni Sori returned to Chhattisgarh on 11 March after undergoing treatment for injuries caused on her face by an acid attack. She said, "My aim in life is to get justice for us tribals".

Awards On 18 May 2018, Soni Sori won the Front Line Defenders Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk. She was among five winners who won awards from their regions. Sori won this award for her on-going work towards justice for justice for the Adivasi community in the Bastar region of Chhattisgarh, India. The other winners are Nurcan Baysal (Turkey), the LUCHA movement (Democratic Republic of Congo), La Resistencia Pacífica de la Microregión de Ixquisis (Guatemala), and Hassan Bouras (Algeria).