At the heart of this funeral pyre, the bodies of 12 tribal villagers are burning because of a dispute over land, politics and money. Sini Soy has lived here all her life. Her son was one of the 12 shot dead by police. She believes that the killings were an attempt to scare her people off the land.

SINI SOY, (Translation): They've been trying to drive us away for a long time, but we have been resisting. They thought this would make us run away.

I've arrived at a village of the Ho people. The Ho are one of India's surviving indigenous tribes. The Ho have been farming the rice fields around Kalinga Nagar for generations. They've now been ordered to move off their traditional land to make way for a massive mining and steel operation.
Buried beneath their fields are mineral deposits worth billions of dollars to one of the India's most powerful companies - Tata Steel.

SANJAY CHOWRY, TATA STEEL: This is one of the places which has the largest, one of the largest, maybe the third or fourth largest concentration for iron ore. It has got uranium, it has got bauxite, it has got manganese, it has got chrome. I think every important mineral used by industry, not only in India but abroad, is available here in very, very large quantities.

The Orissa state government bought this land from the Ho in 1995 but the majority of villagers weren't even part of the deal because they were never given the land papers they were entitled to when the one and only property survey was done by the British in the 1920s. The land is worth billions, but the Ho sold it for next to nothing. Priya Ranjan Kar is a journalist who has watched this land deal unfold.

PRIYA RANJAN KAR, JOURNALIST (Translation): The government bought the land from the Adivasi for, at the most, 35,000 rupees per acre. After buying the land, the government has now sold the same property for 150,000-200,000 rupees per acre to this new company, and in some cases the price has gone as high as 350,000 rupees per acre. The people are saying that this is their land, and asking why the government is not sharing the profit with them.

As India embarks on a massive project of industrialisation, this process of moving farmers to make way for development is occurring across the country but the benefits rarely flow back to the farmers, who end up losing their land and their livelihood.


When the Tata company moved into Kalinga Nagar, the Ho realised they had been taken advantage of. They began to protest. Twice last year they laid down in front of bulldozers, and Tata's work had to be stopped. Chema Hebrom has raised a large family here. He's a farmer and herds sheep in the fields near Kalinga Nagar.

CHEMA HEBROM, (Translation): Our earth was being taken for the building of a factory. The factory people were not willing to pay us more for it. We were pleading with them to increase the amount a little more. We were asking them to increase the price because they were not going to pay up for our homesteads. We did not know there would be this kind of beatings and death.

So on January 2 of this year, when bulldozers came again to try to clear the land, the police sent hundreds of armed police officers to ensure that Tata's work went ahead.

PRIYA RANJAN KAR, (Translation): Because in the past the police had clashed with the tribals, and because of protests no industrial work had been able to go ahead in the area, even though these companies wanted to invest a great deal of money. This time the police decided the work was going ahead no matter what.

Chakradhar Badara was shot in the stomach by police, and he spent three months in the hospital. He was one of the first people to arrive at the protest.

CHAKRADHAR BADARA, (Translation): On that day we went there between 9am and 10am. Everybody was saying that our land was being taken over and that bulldozers had come so we went to stop the work. So everyone went there together. Once enough people had arrived, we marched forward.

The police showed me tribal weapons that they recovered from the protest - a collection of sticks and arrows. They told me that 1,000 armed tribals swarmed officers and attacked them.

ASIT PANIGRAHI, SUPERINTENDENT, ORISSA POLICE: They came and they, very tactically, they split into three flanks and tried to surround police and attack from all sides.

Eyewitnesses put the number of tribal protesters at closer to 300, and I was told that the villagers carrying weapons did not mean they were planning to attack the police.

PRIYA RANJAN KAR, (Translation): Whenever they gather, it is their traditional to bring ceremonial weapons like their bow and arrow, spear, or a staff. They came to protest peacefully - by lying down in front of the bulldozers they believed that the work would be stopped.

Tulashi Arrar was wounded when she crossed a rope barrier that the police had set up around the site. As soon as she crossed the rope, shrapnel tore at her leg.

TULASHI ARRAR, (Translation): The bomb was on the rope. The bomb was attached to the rope, so when the rope was pulled, the bomb exploded.

Chema Hebrom was close by. He arrived just after the explosion was heard.

CHEMA HEMBROM, (Translation): Some people had already assembled and some were trickling in with us. The bomb had just exploded, blowing up some men. And there were bodies lying around and a riot had broken out.

The villagers now believe that these 'bombs' were landmines connected to a trip wire. The use of landmines against the tribals was widely reported in the Indian media.

POLICE CHIEF: These are the landmine covers, OK? These are the landmine covers.

But the police claim that this explosion was actually a series of stun grenades, perhaps connected to the rope barrier or simply fired the moment it was crossed.

ASIT PANIGRAHI: These huge sounds which are created by these stun grenades, which are intended to create huge smoke but coupled with huge sound, you know, so that has led to the confusion in their minds.

The confusion caused by the stun grenades was deadly. The explosive sound and the smoke terrified the villagers. Some fainted, appearing dead, and the tribals panicked in the chaos. A police officer was isolated and surrounded by the mob.

PRIYA RANJAN KAR, (Translation): When they were attacked with tear gas, unfortunately the constable reached the tribals' position. He was mauled by the crowd and killed. Someone actually used an axe to chop his hand.

ASIT PANIGRAHI: So one policeman was butchered to death, many policemen were injured so in order to save them - those, you know, who got inside the mob - and also to save themselves, finally they were compelled, in self-defence, to open fire with live ammunitions.

In retaliation for the death of one of their own, the police began firing live rounds into the crowd of tribal villagers. Many were unarmed. Some were shot in the back while they were running away.


CHEMA HEMBROM, (Translation): Some were shot in the stomach, some were rolling in pain. Some were shot in the head. People were just dying.

Sini didn't see her son killed. A young tribal boy was the only eyewitness.

SINI SOY,(Translation): The boy who was watching said that even after falling, my son was shot twice, then kicked in the face and body, then the police came and stabbed him in the forehead with their bayonets. You could see the marks of the spikes of the boots all over his face and chest.

Chema Hebrom was so badly injured that the police took him for dead.

CHEMA HEMBROM, (Translation): I was dragged to the vehicle, then another person was also shot, and dragged to the vehicle, and we were both dumped in the jeep together with the dead bodies. We were all taken to the morgue.

By the end of the carnage six bodies were delivered to the morgue. Six more died by night's end. Anup Sharma was one of the doctors who performed the post-mortems on the villagers' bodies. He says that the police weren't trying to disperse the crowd, they were shooting to kill.

ANUP SHARMA, DOCTOR (Translation): If the aim is to kill the person, well, if a person wants to kill somebody, he will shoot at the abdomen and chest, the vital organs are there. He should not try to fire below the knee.

REPORTER: And in this case, all the wounds..

DOCTOR: All the wounds were near the vital organs.

If the plan on January 2 was to scare the villagers, the plan backfired. The day after the incident, the tribals started a new protest that would cost the government and industry millions.

SANJAY CHOWDRY: We have been dealing with the tribal peoples for the last 100 years. I have not seen a reaction like this against any company thing, any company activity, of this kind of violence.

The Ho village sits next to a highway that feeds all industry in the area. Even late at night, the road is filled with passing trucks. By 4 January the tribals had blocked this major highway with the bodies of their dead. Later they brought rocks, fallen trees, anything that would keep the trucks from passing through. The roadblock became a rallying point for tribals from around the state who felt threatened or cheated by the recent land expulsions. Even tonight, months later, the tribal roadblock remains in force.
A mass cremation was held for the victims. Village children held torches that would light the fire. The Ho tradition is to wash the dead before they're put into the funeral pyre. What the Ho discovered when they unwrapped the bodies turned mass grief into mass horror.

SINI SOY, (Translation): All those who were taken by the police, their hands were severed, not only my son, others also - men and women. The women, their breasts were chopped off and the men, their genitals were chopped off.

The chopping of the hands was sacrilegious for the Ho people. A major part of their funeral rite involves placing grain in the hands of the dead. The police claim that the hands were severed to allow for forensic identification, but they do not accept that the bodies were sexually mutilated. After the cremation, the only evidence that remains is this post-mortem report, which clearly states that all of the victims' inner and outer genitalia were intact when the bodies left the morgue.

ASIT PANIGRAHI: So after the cremation of the dead bodies, anybody can allege anything for any part of the body missing. That allegation could have come on the same day but 10 days - allegation coming after 10 days of cremation, it smacks of some, I mean

REPORTER: So you're saying that the villagers are lying about..

ASIT PANIGRAHI: No, I don't know. The state human rights commission is inquiring into this chopped palm incident, and also this cutting of the private genitals and whatever, and things will be clear after that.

The Orissa government quickly realised the political damage that the massacre and the discretion of the bodies was causing. All the doctors and the administrators involved have since either been transferred or suspended. The state government has offered to pay medical expenses and compensation to all of the victims, and they've even doubled the original price they paid for the land - a figure which is still well below its real value. The massacre has placed the development at Kalinga Nagar under a huge cloud but both the state government and Tata Steel continue to plead that the broader benefits of industrialisation should not be lost sight of.

SANJAY CHOWDRY: There's a lot to say about a person wanting to till his land and not move. I mean, this has been age-old question right from whether it is the Western world or the Eastern world, whichever - all around the world this has happened, OK? But the greater good is what is important.

NAVEEN PATNAIK, CHIEF MINISTER OF ORISSA: It's extremely important for Orissa, for this state because it will bring a great many jobs, employment to our people, both directly and indirectly. Also it will bring a vast amount of revenue, which is much required for a poor state like Orissa.

On March 10, another one of the tribals who had been hospitalised in Delhi died. I was standing beside his family when they heard the news.

MADHAN, (Translation): The bullet entered from his right side and came out the left side of his stomach. The doctor told us his kidney was infected and that lead to a slow death.

Villagers from all around came to mourn, and later that day, Shyam Gagrai was cremated on the same spot that the 12 other victims had been put to rest. Now 14 people had died - 13 villagers, and 1 police constable.
It now seems likely that the attempt to force the villagers from their land with bullets and with bulldozers has backfired badly for the company and for the state.
The villagers at Kalinga Nagar are now more determined than ever to stay and fight for the land that they've tilled for generations.

SINI SOY, (Translation): We did not send our children there to die so that we could get their money. We sent our children to save our fields. What we want is our fields. Our children's worth does not have a price. We wants our lands, we want our homes, as we are living now. We want to live.