Activist Vittala’s fight against the UAPA

Acquitted of charges, but who will answer for the pain, distress caused during the decade-long investigation?

On October 21, journalist Vittala Malekudiya and his father Lingappa Malekudiya were acquitted of charges of sedition and terrorism.

At a time when the number of cases registered under sedition law and UAPA (Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act) has shot up, Vittala's acquittal is something of a rarity.

Like many other UAPA cases, the police found 'incriminating' evidence — among them a book by Bhagat Singh, a few pamphlets and toy binoculars — and presented this as proof of Vittala and his father’s involvement with Naxalites.

Vittala hails from the Malekudiya tribe, who traditionally made a living gathering forest produce. While enrolling in a postgraduate degree in journalism at the Mangalore University in 2012, he became the first person from his community to pursue higher education.

But when he was arrested as a 23-year-old, his entire identity was reduced to that of being a ‘Naxal’.

Before university, Vittala studied at a college in Belthangady. To get there, he had to first walk six kilometres — which took an hour — from his house inside the Kudremukha National Park to the bus stop. From there, it was another 20-km bus ride to the college.

When he returned home — another bus ride, another hour-long walk through the forest — he was often stopped by members of the Anti-Naxal Force (ANF) who checked his bags and questioned him.

Vittala's village, Kuthlur, in Dakshina Kannada's Belthangady taluk, was part of a 'Naxal-affected area'. The Naxal movement was at its height in the region in the late 90s and early noughties, but by the time Vittala was going to college in 2010, it had died down.

"It is now a 'police-affected area'," Vittala quips.

There was a reason for the Naxal movement being strong in this region. Take the case of Kuthlur. The village has about 30 households of Malekudiya tribals but it had no basic amenities — motorable roads or electricity. There were no health clinics or grocery stores. The local government ashram school had no teachers. Government ration was only delivered once a month.

Growing up in these circumstances, Vittala was determined that things should change. By the time he was pursuing his journalism course, Vittala was regularly highlighting the plight of Kuthlur's residents and acting as a reliable source of the ANF and Forest Department's activities in the Kudremukh National Park (KNP) for Mangaluru-based journalists.

At that time, Vittala says, there was a lot of pressure on Kuthlur's residents to move out of the KNP. As a policy, the Forest Department wanted to clear the national park of human settlements. They were offering Rs 10 lakh by way of compensation for the families in Kuthlur.

But most families were not convinced. They had stayed there for generations. A few of them even had patta lands in the area, where they grew cash crops like arecanut. “As far as we have seen, nobody who took the compensation package has done well,” says Vittala.

There was also harassment and intimidation by the ANF, who often entered and searched the houses of residents at odd hours, questioned and noted down the details of any visitors to their houses, including relatives, and interrogated young men about the presence of other 'Naxals' in the forest.

In between, the ANF would try and goad them into accepting the Forest Department’s compensation.

On March 2, 2012, Vittala received word that two residents of the village had been taken away by the ANF. He duly tipped off the media, who in turn pressured the police, irritating them.

"I am certain they had been taken away with the intention of being encountered," Vittala says. In 2006, two other residents from the village, Dinakara and Vasanth, were killed in police action.

Vittala says this incident was the tipping point for the ANF, already annoyed by his actions. He maintains that what followed was a retribution for raising his voice.

The next day, on March 3, Vittala was at the university hostel when he received news that the police had entered his house and hit his father, breaking his leg. He immediately set out for his home, where he found 30-40 policemen waiting to arrest him.

Both Vittala and his father were charged with Sections 120 B & 121 (sedition) and Section 19 & 20 of the UAPA — all of which carried a life imprisonment term. They were held in police custody for 15 days, before being taken to judicial custody.

Lawyer's support

Dinesh Hegde Ulepady, who represented Vittala and his father in court, was already involved in a few other sensitive cases at the time. In 2012, he was made aware of Vittala's plight by the local media and activists. On coming to know the facts of the case, particularly that Vittala was a journalism student, Ulepady opened with a salvo against the university.

Ulepady says he just wanted to make sure that a young man's education was not disrupted.

The university had come up with various excuses — raising attendance issues, insisting that Vittala apply for the exam application in person — to prevent him from writing the exams.

Ulepady succeeded in getting an alternative release to write the exams, where the photographs of him writing the exams in handcuffs caused widespread outrage. The handcuffs were removed in the subsequent days, but the police escort remained.

"The university should have encouraged him," Ulepady says. “But they were impressed by a section of the media, who had already branded him a Naxal."

By extension, Ulepady was also tagged as a 'Naxal lawyer'.

Vittala says there was nothing remarkable about his time at the Mangalore District Prison, until he offhandedly mentions that serial killer 'Cyanide' Mohan was a roommate. There were other gangsters convicted of serious crimes, but they didn't trouble him. In all, Vittala and his father spent nearly four months in jail, before being released on bail.

Ulepady says Vittala and his father were lucky. The police had not filed the charge-sheet within 90 days, and they received a bail on 'technical grounds'. "If it wasn't for the technical bail, they would have been in jail all these nine years," he says, pointing to the other high-profile convictions under the UAPA in recent years.

Ulepady was also mildly frustrated by Vittala's innocence. "Even after the hearings, he seemed to be unaware that I was his lawyer. Then I realised, Kuthlur, and to some extent Mangaluru, had been his entire world. Even in the village, all these years, the people never thought they had a right to defend themselves or even file a case against the police," Ulepady says.

"I didn't know anything about the law and what processes are there," Vittala says, with a smile. "I was lucky to have found someone like Dinesh. Over all these years, he has not charged me anything. Now when I think of it, a normal lawyer's fees would have run into the lakhs."

After the case was registered, Ulepady and his family visited Kuthlur and witnessed the issues Vittala had been raising first-hand. In his own capacity, he arranged for some livelihood generation activities for a few families, like goat-rearing. But what moved him was the villagers' plea to get the 'Naxal' tag removed.

"The villagers said 'we are called Naxals when we come out of the forest. It even becomes a problem when we look to get our children married. Please remove this tag'. This moved me," Ulepady says.

After Vittala got out of jail, he found that the entire village had rallied around him. "They did not look at it as 'Vittala's case'. They would constantly enquire after me or the status of the case. It was a big source of strength," he says.

Fighting for change

Driven by the desire to bring about some change, Vittala entered politics over the next few years, even contesting the Gram Panchayat and Zilla Panchayat elections. Then, in 2018, he left politics behind and took up an apprenticeship offer from Prajavani.

Meanwhile, the case kept making its way through the legal system. This meant Vittala had to register his presence whenever the court called him. On some days, this meant he finished his work with the newspaper at 12 in the night, hopped on his bike and rode to Mangaluru for the court hearing, and then rode back for work the next day.

The evidence hearing commenced in 2019. The crux of the police case revolved around ordinary items found in Vittala's house — 200 gm of tea, some sugar, a vegetable knife, a book by Bhagat Singh, a children's binocular, newspaper clippings and some pamphlets that urged people not to vote in the election until their long-standing demands were met.

Right from the beginning, Ulepady built his case by trying to highlight the social aspects of the case, especially the plight of Malekudiyas in Kuthlur. He examined each item the police presented, like the book by Bhagat Singh.

"I asked them if it was an offence to own a book about a freedom fighter. They accused Vittala of supplying Naxals with provisions. I asked, 'When the shop is 10 km away from my house, how much stock should I maintain?'. Even then, I asked them if the quantity of grocery they found would be enough to supply Naxals. The children's binoculars are something that are available at every village fair. This entire case is a shame to the government," Ulepady says.

The one positive outcome after the case was registered against Vittala was that the police harassment and visits to the village had reduced. The villagers themselves had come together and built a kaccha road, using work under the National Rural Employment Programme. "We had just asked for basic facilities. Even now, our demands are the same. Each house has individual solar units but no regular electricity. The anganwadi is still in a dilapidated condition," Vittala says.

Through all this, not a single politician from Dakshina Kannada or Karnataka visited his house. CPI(M) leaders Prakash Karat and Brinda Karat had visited the hamlet during their trip to Karnataka. M B Rajesh, the current speaker of the Kerala Legislative Assembly, who was then the MP from Palakkad constituency, had visited his village and raised the issue in the Lok Sabha.

When the court acquitted him on October 25, Vittala says there was a small celebration in the village, a sort of vindication of their fight.

Ulepady, meanwhile, says the fight is only half done. "We are now pushing for an honourable acquittal. This would mean conferring back the reputation of Vittala, and the entire community."

Ulepady also appreciates that there were so many social activists and progressive people who stood behind Vittala's fight. "Take the job with Prajavani. If not for that, his entire education would have gone to waste. It's the same with a lot of other issues," he says.

"In India, the government always defends the officials. My fight is for accountability. Some amendments should be carried out. The responsibility for this must be fixed at some level," he says. "If we succeed, it will make history," he says.

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