The seven stitches on Banshi Hansda’s nose are growing fainter but his anger is still fresh. No less than the Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren ordered the police to take action against his assailants, but over a month later, the police are yet to even file a first information report. The reason was simple, the 40-year-old Adivasi man alleged: two policemen assaulted him with a rifle butt, and the police were trying to cover things up.
On the evening of December 12, Hansda, a resident of Dhawaiya village in Gomia block, was cycling back home from the mining equipment factory where he worked in Bokaro district, when he saw a police checkpoint looming ahead. In deference to the police, he got off his cycle, walking up to the barricades. The policemen asked him a few questions, before letting him off.
Hansda walked a few steps ahead, then stopped to urinate on the side of the pucca road.
Suddenly, he felt a strong jab on this face.
The policemen hit him with a rifle…