THE struggle of India’s Adivasi communities, indigenous people of central India, has long been overshadowed by narratives of insurgency and national security.
Yet beneath the state’s rhetoric lies a systematic campaign of repression against Adivasi human rights defenders who challenge land dispossession, militarization and extrajudicial violence.
The cases of Raghu Midiyami and Suneeta Pottam, co-founders of the Moolvasi Bachao Manch (MBM), expose the shrinking civic space for Adivasi voices. Both have faced arbitrary detention, denial of due process and reprisals for peacefully mobilizing their communities against displacement and violence. Their persecution illustrates a broader pattern where the Indian State increasingly conflates peaceful activism with insurgency, eroding democratic protections for its most marginalized citizens.
On 27 February 2025, while receiving treatment for severe injuries sustained in a road accident at Dantewada District Hospital, Midiyami was forcibly taken away by officials of the National Investigation Agency (NIA). His arrest was not coincidental; it came on the very day he was scheduled to sign a petition challenging the state ban on MBM. The High Court ultimately dismissed this petition on 5 May 2025, but the timing underscores the retaliatory intent behind his detention.
As a founding member of MBM, Midiyami has been a prominent voice against arbitrary detentions, extrajudicial killings and state-backed displacement in Bastar. His work, rooted in peaceful mobilization of Adivasi youth, directly challenged entrenched patterns of impunity. His arrest must therefore be understood as an attempt to silence one of the few remaining defenders willing to confront state excesses in Chhattisgarh.
On 9 April 2024, plain-clothes police in Bijapur attempted to drag Pottam into a vehicle without a warrant, claiming she had been “summoned.” She resisted, demanding legal documentation that was never produced. This incident reflected the blatant disregard for due process that has become a hallmark of state behaviour in Bastar.
Less than two months later, on 3 June 2024, her residence in Raipur was raided by police. She was arrested without a warrant, accused of fabricated charges ranging from murder to damaging government property and of being associated with the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist).
Despite her pre-trial detention period expired on 31 July 2025, she remains incarcerated, a prisoner not of law but of her dissent. The systematic nature of her persecution reveals how gendered repression is used to silence Adivasi women defenders who dare to speak against entrenched structures of power. This pattern of fabricated charges, arbitrary detention and prolonged imprisonment demonstrates a deliberate strategy: to dismantle community movements through attrition, fear and legal harassment.
Finally, the persecution of defenders such as Midiyami and Pottam illustrates the broader crisis of governance in conflict-affected regions like Bastar. Development projects imposed without community consent, militarization of Adivasi areas and suppression of dissent are deepening alienation and resentment, potentially fueling the very instability the State claims to combat.
If India aspires to global leadership and legitimacy, it must begin by protecting its most vulnerable citizens and respecting the rights of those who defend them. Until then, the persecution of Adivasi defenders will remain a stark reminder that in the world’s so-called largest democracy, speaking for the marginalized remains one of the most dangerous acts of all.
—The writer is contributing columnist.
