Marenga Village, Chhattisgarh:
The 21-hour hostage crisis in Chhattisgarh's Sukma district finally ended on Saturday night with more than 250 villagers abducted by Naxals returning home to their village Marenga. While the family members of the released villagers took a brief sigh of relief, the same could not be said for the Nag family.
Sadaram Nag's mother, 60-year-old Rehmati is inconsolable as her son's body returned to the village. Sadaram, one of the kidnapped villagers, faced a public hearing in front of Jan militia and was lynched as the Naxals felt he was a police informer.
"We were taken away, then were given food after which Naxals gathered in a large number. The held a public hearing and killed Sadaram as he was supervising the bridge construction work near our village and also they said he was a police informer," Bahadur, one of the many released villagers, told NDTV.
The Marenga village is dominated by Dhurva tribe. People here decided not to support Naxals and had even started working as labourers at a nearby bridge construction site, for which they had to pay the price. Off camera, the reluctant villagers say they had stopped attending meetings called by Naxals and had even stopped providing them logistical support like food and shelter - something that irked the Naxals even more.
The villagers feel the police did not do much to rescue them.
"The Naxals did not take me as my leg is injured. We are disappointed with the police as they did not come to help abducted villagers, despite the police station being just four kilometres away from the village," said a villager Jagatram Nag.
Sources in Chhattisgarh police in their defense say, "We did not go to the forest area to search for the abducted villagers as Naxals on seeing us could have harmed the kidnapped villagers. FIR has been registered and the villagers have also given us some names we will take action soon."