House numbers, drones, family registers: Bastar villages under web of surveillance

Nearly every house in Chutvahi village bears a number – painted on the wall by the security forces in bold English letters.

“These numbers are used to identify us,” said Bhima Kosa, a resident of the village deep inside Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur district.

“I’m from number 12,” he added, with a laugh, prompting chuckles from others around him. “I am from 36,” joined in another as the laughter grew louder.

The laughter faded as the conversation moved to the purpose of the house-numbering exercise.

“If a villager is stopped in the forest or at the market [by the security forces], they are asked to spell out their number,” Kosa said. “If they can’t remember – especially old people – they are taken to the [security] camp.”

Over the last two years, as Scroll has reported previously, security camps manned by central paramilitary forces have mushroomed in the forested blocks of Bijapur and Sukma districts. Considered the last strongholds of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist), these areas are now slipping into the state’s control as security forces race to meet the March 31 deadline set by Union Home Minister Amit Shah to end the Maoist insurgency.

The security offensive has come with heightened surveillance, say the Adivasi people living in forest villages like Chutvahi and...

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