Injured Sori sent to Raipur,refuses to eat

Sori,speaking to The Indian Express while in Bastar,admitted she had tripped in custody,leading to her head and back injuries. “I did fall down but this was because I was under stress,” she said.

Hours before she was admitted to the female surgical ward of Maharani Hospital on Monday,her father Madru Ram Sori had been discharged from the male surgical ward a floor above. He had been shot at by alleged Naxals who had barged into his Dantewada home” “If I were a Naxal,why would they attack my father?” Sori said.

The father received frequent visitors during his four-month stay,but no one from from the family visited the daughter,a ward attendant said.

Soni Sori had been long been on the police’s Naxal watch list,and wanted since the arrest of Lingaram Kodopi,her nephew,from Palnar in Dantewada. Dantewada SP Ankit Garg says Sori had been present when Kodopi was caught accepting Rs 15 lakh a” “protection money”,allegedly being routed from the Essar Group to Naxals through a contractor. Police say Sori escaped then but she has denied it. She was arrested from Delhi on October 4.

The aunt and nephew are both educated,police point out,alleging they worked as conduits between Naxals and the company. Soni,superintendent of a government school in Jabeli,studied at Mata Rukmani Seva Sansthan in Dantewada. Niece of a CPI MLA,now a mother of three,she often took up public causes. “I know her since her time at the Sansthan. I would visit the school and guide her,” said Himanshu Kumar,an activist now based in Delhi.

In a letter to a Delhi judge last week,she had cited a threat to her life from the police and pleaded not to be sent back to Chhattisgarh.

Soni was first named an accused in the attack on Congress leader Avadesh Kumar Gautam in 2010,but continued to work at the school. According to the police,the vehicle used in the attack belonged to her husband Anil Putane.

Himanshu sees a revenge motive in the arrest” “When Soni was getting her school building constructed,she did not let Gautam get the contrac”.” Soni’s elder brother Sahdev Sodi once contested a panchayat election against Gautam’s wife,who won.

Sori says a Dantewada constable,Shravan Kumar Maankar,had asked her to remain in Delhi,told her she had been framed and said the case would soon fall apart. Local papers have reported that he has been shifted to Police Lines. SP Garg denied this,saying the constable was not linked to the case.