Odisha: Internet shutdown in Malkangiri after clashes over woman’s murder

A violent clash between tribal communities and Bengali settlers in Malkangiri left at least a dozen houses damaged, several vehicles destroyed, and nearly four structures gutted

Bhubaneswar: The Malkangiri administration in Odisha has imposed internet shutdown for the next 24 hours across the district and prohibited congregation of more than 5 people in two villages following a violent clash between tribal communities and Bengali settlers that left at least a dozen houses damaged, several vehicles destroyed, and nearly four structures gutted.

Police said the situation is now under control after the deployment of additional forces (Representational image)

The confrontation, which erupted on Sunday afternoon, stemmed from the gruesome killing of a 51-year-old tribal woman, whose headless body was recovered from a riverbank last week.

Malkangiri district collector Somesh Upadhyay ordered suspension of both mobile and broadband internet services across the district for 24 hours, effectively suspending social media apps a day after violence unfolded in a village with nearly 5,000 tribals from Rakhelguda village, armed with traditional weapons including axes, bows and arrows, marching to MV-26 village under Korkunda Sadar Police station limits. The mob went from house to house, setting fire to at least four structures, damaging a dozen homes, destroying vehicles, and looting shops belonging to the approximately 100 Bengali families residing in the settlement.

Police have detained two persons in connection with the violence, while many residents of MV-26 village have reportedly fled the area. The immediate trigger for the clash was the discovery of the headless body of Lake Padiami, a widowed Koya tribal woman from Rakhelguda village, near the Poteru river on December 4.

According to police investigations, the roots of the tragedy lie in a land dispute between Padiami and a Bengali settler named Sukumar Mandal, who had been cultivating her land as a sharecropper for the past decade, following her husband’s death. Last year, with her son having come of age, Padiami decided to terminate the sharecropping arrangement and reclaim her land for family cultivation. This decision escalated tensions between the two parties throughout the year.

On December 1, Podiami went to her field for paddy harvesting, carried three bundles of paddy to the drying yard, and never returned home. When she failed to come back, her son filed a missing person’s report the same day, suspecting that Sukumar and his associates had kidnapped and murdered his mother, disposing of her body in the river to destroy evidence. His worst fears were confirmed on December 4 when Podiami’s headless body was discovered near the Poteru river. The victim’s head remains untraceable.

Police arrested Subharanjan Mondal, 45, a resident of MV-26 belonging to the Bengali community, in connection with the case on Sunday. However, this failed to placate the tribal community, which had been demanding immediate action against all suspects involved in the gruesome murder.

On December 5, members of the Adivasi community, led by Mukunda Podiami, president of the Koya Samaj, assembled at MV-26 demanding the immediate arrest of the culprits and recovery of the missing head. The gathering was described by officials as “highly charged and aggressive”, raising concerns about potential violence.

The violence has once again brought into sharp focus the decades-old tensions between tribal communities and Bengali settlers in Malkangiri, rooted in what many view as a fundamentally flawed rehabilitation project. In 1956, the then government, overwhelmed by the influx of Hindu Bengali migrants to West Bengal following Partition, decided to rehabilitate refugees across 65,000 square kilometres in the then undivided districts of Koraput in Odisha and Bastar in Madhya Pradesh. The Dandakaranya Development Authority project was established in 1958, with settlers arriving in what is now Malkangiri district in Odisha and Kanker district in Chhattisgarh.

The villages where Bengalis were resettled were given serial numbers with the prefix MV (Malkangiri village) in Odisha and PV (Paralkote village) in erstwhile Madhya Pradesh. These designations remain to this day, a constant reminder of their origins.

Under the Dandakaranya project, each Bengali family was initially allotted seven acres of land, including half an acre for homestead and gardens. This was later reduced to six acres, and in November 1977, the government further reduced allocations to five, four, and three acres in non-irrigated, semi-irrigated, and perennially irrigated areas respectively. Non-agricultural families received two acres of agricultural land and a homestead plot of 7,200 square feet. Land pattas, initially conferred for 20 years, were eventually made permanent.

Tribals alleged that the Dandakaranya project, ostensibly designed as a humanitarian rehabilitation initiative, followed discriminatory practices against the numerically strong tribal communities who were the original inhabitants of the region. The clearing of forests in the Dandakaranya region for Bengali settlements deprived Adivasi communities of access to vital forest resources, fundamentally altering their traditional way of life. The project effectively treated native Adivasis as a secondary social group competing for facilities in their own homeland, sowing seeds of resentment that have periodically erupted into violence.

This is not the first time such tensions have boiled over in Malkangiri. In August 2021, Bengali migrants from MV-93 and Bhumia tribals from Phalkaguda village clashed over a 75-acre plot of government land. The tribals wanted to create a forest on the land, while Bengali settlers had been tilling it and had converted part of it into a community graveyard. That incident too resulted in the imposition of prohibitory orders.