Muthanga verdict raises disturbing questions about the law reaching the powerless through the criminal process, and not the powerful

Twenty-three years after the Muthanga forests of Wayanad echoed with gunfire, the law has finally delivered its verdict.

But the judgment has left behind a question larger than the guilt or innocence of those who stood trial: why has the criminal justice system been so much more successful in pursuing Adivasi protesters than in holding accountable those who exercised the power of the state against them?

The answer may now lie, at least partly, with the Kerala High Court. Four of those convicted, including Adivasi Gothra Maha Sabha leader and Muthanga agitation leader M Geethanandan, have challenged the verdict.

On August 6, the High Court expressed concern over the manner in which the trial court arrived at its findings and observed that the judgment required thorough scrutiny. It has sought the original order framing charges against the accused before proceeding with the appeals.

The intervention is significant. It came barely days after the Kalpetta Principal Sessions Court acquitted all 57 accused of murdering police constable K V Vinod but convicted four of them, including Geethanandan, on other serious charges arising from the confrontation. The convictions included offences relating to unlawful assembly, rioting, wrongful confinement, causing hurt to public servants, kidnapping and attempt to murder. The four received varying sentences, with the maximum being five years.

The High Court’s intervention has therefore reopened a case many assumed had finally closed after more than two decades.

Yet even if the High Court eventually overturns the convictions, the larger injustice of Muthanga will remain.

The most striking feature of the case is not simply the extraordinary delay. It is the imbalance in the way the law has travelled through the events of February 19, 2003. The death of a police constable became the central criminal case.

“The death of Jogi, an Adivasi protester, during the police firing became part of a much wider story of state violence, compensation and inquiry. The torture of tribal people and others arrested after the operation generated judicial and human rights interventions. Yet no police officer or senior authority has faced a comparable criminal reckoning for the use of force that left Adivasis dead and hundreds injured,” observes K K Surendran, faculty of a teacher training college who was arrested at the time on charges of supporting the violent agitation and subjected to severe police torture. He was later acquitted of the case by investigating agencies, including the CBI.

This is the uncomfortable legacy of Muthanga.

What happened that day?

The agitation did not begin as a confrontation with the police. It began as a demand for land.

Hundreds of landless Adivasi families occupied forest land at Muthanga, within the Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary, in January 2003 under the banner of the Adivasi Gothra Maha Sabha. Their decision followed years of frustration over governments’ failure to honour promises of land distribution.

For generations, Adivasi families in Wayanad had watched their traditional relationship with land disappear while plantations, forests, development projects and state institutions increasingly determined who could own and use land.

“The occupation was therefore not an isolated act of trespass. It was the culmination of a long history of dispossession and political betrayal,” says Geethanandan.

On February 19, police and forest officials moved to evict the protesters. What followed became one of the most disturbing episodes in Kerala’s modern history.

The confrontation turned violent. Jogi was killed in the police firing. Constable Vinod also died. Several Adivasis and police personnel were injured. The settlement was dismantled and hundreds of protesters arrested.

For the Adivasi community, Muthanga became synonymous with state repression. For the state, the death of Vinod became the centre of the criminal case.

The trial that followed moved through years of investigation, procedural complications and judicial delays. By the time the verdict arrived, those who had been young activists in 2003 had become middle-aged or elderly. Some witnesses had died. Memories had faded. Documents had become increasingly difficult to trace. A generation had grown up knowing the Muthanga struggle largely through stories told by parents and activists.

“Justice delayed in such circumstances is not merely a procedural failure. It changes the nature of justice itself,” says rights activist C R Neelakandan.

The trial court’s most consequential finding was that the prosecution had failed to prove the murder charge against the accused. The circumstances surrounding Vinod’s death remained clouded by contradictions in witness testimony and questions about what actually happened inside the makeshift structure where he was held during the police operation.

That finding should have prompted a deeper examination of the prosecution narrative. Instead, four accused were convicted on other charges.

It is now for the High Court to decide whether those convictions can stand. The appellants have challenged, among other things, the trial court’s reliance on a finding of criminal conspiracy. The High Court has already questioned the use of a “prima facie” finding in arriving at a final conviction.

A prima facie conclusion may be relevant when charges are framed. It cannot casually substitute for proof beyond reasonable doubt at the end of a criminal trial.

This distinction is not merely technical. In a case involving an Adivasi movement, it goes to the heart of how the criminal justice system understands political protest.

The central injustice of Muthanga

There is another missing side to the Muthanga trial.

The National Human Rights Commission raised serious questions about the police action soon after the incident. The Kerala High Court too expressed concern over the manner in which the state’s own senior officials had concluded that the police action was justified without an independent investigation. The demand for an impartial inquiry into the firing and allegations of torture reflected the seriousness of the allegations.

“The criminal law did not travel with the same determination in the opposite direction. No police officer or senior official has been punished criminally for the deaths of Adivasi protesters in the firing. That is the central injustice of Muthanga,” observes social activist Kusumam Joseph.

This does not mean the death of Constable Vinod should be treated lightly. A police officer’s life cannot be valued differently from the life of an Adivasi.

But precisely because every life must carry equal value before the law, the circumstances surrounding Jogi’s death and the injuries suffered by protesters deserved the same forensic determination. They did not receive it.

The difference becomes even starker when one looks at what happened to those arrested in the aftermath.

Years later, courts found serious violations in individual cases arising from the police action. Surendran, arrested after the Muthanga events and subjected to custodial violence, was awarded substantial compensation, with the court directing that the amount be recovered from the police officers responsible.

A court recognising custodial torture is important. But compensation is not the same as criminal accountability.

For a tribal family that has lost a member, money cannot answer who ordered the firing. For someone tortured in custody, compensation cannot substitute for prosecution. For a community that watched its people being beaten, arrested and driven out of the forest, an official acknowledgement years later cannot erase the memory of what happened.

Muthanga therefore exposes a disturbing feature of Indian justice: the law often reaches the powerless through the criminal process, while the powerful are dealt with through inquiries, departmental procedures and compensation.

The difference is not accidental.

The Adivasi protesters were visible. They occupied land. They resisted eviction. Their leaders could be named, arrested and prosecuted. The machinery of the state was much harder to place inside the dock.

Orders travel through files. Responsibility becomes collective. Decisions become institutional. Individual accountability disappears somewhere between the police station, the district administration and the government.

That is why Muthanga remains unfinished.

The High Court appeal provides an opportunity to examine not only whether the convictions are legally sustainable but also whether the Muthanga story has been interpreted fairly by the justice system.

“Muthanga was not an isolated event. Across India, Adivasi communities continue to confront the criminalisation of struggles over land, forests and natural resources. The language changes from encroachment to security, from development to conservation, from public order to national interest. But the underlying conflict remains remarkably similar: communities with the least political power are often asked to prove their right to land they have inhabited for generations,” says Coimbatore-based tribal rights activist C R Bijoy.

The law has now caught up with four of those who stood on the other side of the confrontation.

The question that remains is whether it will ever catch up with those who wielded the power of the state.