Jharkhand High Court Orders Probe into Alleged Fake Tribal Surrenders

The Jharkhand High Court has intervened in a controversy surrounding the alleged fake surrender of over 500 tribal youth misleadingly identified as Naxalites. The state's judiciary has ordered the government to submit a comprehensive status report on the matter.

In a decade-old public interest litigation initiated by the Jharkhand Council for Democratic Rights, it is claimed that the police, in conjunction with the state government, falsely portrayed 514 tribal youth as extremist group members, prompting their fake surrender. The court hearing was conducted by Chief Justice Tarlok Singh Chauhan and Justice Rajesh Shankar.

Representing the petitioner, advocate Rajiv Kumar alleges that these youth were in fact innocent villagers, manipulated under a surrender policy purportedly orchestrated by former Union home minister P Chidambaram. The scheme purportedly involved claims of surrender by Maoists in 2014, but many of those individuals were later found to be innocent. The young men were reportedly housed in the old Birsa Munda Jail for training towards CRPF constable roles, a fact the court has demanded be verified in a forthcoming report ahead of the next hearing in November.

(With inputs from agencies.)