Litigants have named 369 people in cases being mounted against villagers in the Gondalpura area of Jharkhand, eastern India, as a result of 680 days of protests against coal mines proposed by Adani and other companies. The people say they are simply trying to defend their villages, forests, livelihoods and way of life from mining and Adani. The Adani coal project is named ‘Gondulpara’ (a misspelling of the actual name of the village earmarked for destruction).
In the Ken Loach 1974 TV-Series, Days of Hope, about the lives of a British working-class family from 1916 to the 1926 General Strike, in the second episode, there’s a lock-out of the miners from the mining company in Durham. Things were already tense, but when solidarity donations of food from other unions from Liverpool were intercepted by the police and the army, the miners finally revolted and took the members of those forces as hostages. Then the union sits down to discuss what to do. They knew they had crossed a line. Someone says, we should just talk to the company. Someone says we have done that. After long deliberations, they finally agree on direct action. They threaten to blow up the colliery with dynamite; the mine owners relent and agree to the union’s demands; the workers of the colliery have a celebration. But, like all stories like this, the episode ends with the police arresting everyone who led the protest, who then spend years in prison.
Although not as extreme as the miners of Durham, the residents of Gondalpura have also been taking direct action.
In Gondalpura, Vinay Mahto, popularly known as Vikas, has the highest numbers of cases against him in the 680 days of agitation against Adani as of 1 March 2025. In his own calendar, he was arrested during the ‘Raksha Bandhan festival’ of 2023 and kept in prison for ‘30 and one days.’
‘It has also become a point of pride,’ says another villager, ‘on how many cases you have.’
Yet Vinay says he was beaten up by the ‘daroga’ or Inspecter who slapped him and beat him with sticks on his back. He didn’t want to file a counter-case against him, even though the villagers told him he should. He said, a fight is a fight. He says the Inspecter told him to stop opposing Adani and to work for the company, that he shouldn’t be so sharp and keep the people aware of what is happening. Vinay has a sly smirk and knows that being passive is impossible. He has been part of the Karanpura Bachao Sangarsh Samiti, (Save Karanpura Valley Committee) since 2004, when the community chased away more than thirty companies from different parts of the valley.
When asked who pays his legal fees, he speaks in colloquial terms well-known in Jharkhand, that wherever there is a hearth (an earthen cooking stove), or someone making ‘hadiya’ (rice beer), they give 20 rupees per month to run the movement.
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They give a list of the most militant defenders of their lands without hesitation: Krishna Rana, Ganesh Kumar Mahto and his wife, Chandan Kumar, and that perhaps there are a 100-150 women named in cases.
The villagers keep a register of cases. A total of 369 people has been named in First Information Reports. There are over 24 cases against the villagers of the Gondalpura area, all filed by the ‘dalaals’ (in English, touts, who stand to benefit as middlemen in the coal-mining businesses) and not by the coal companies themselves.
In 24 cases, there are charges ranging from Section 191 of the BNS (Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita), which is rioting, to Section 115, which is 'voluntarily causing hurt', to Section 324(5) which is damage to property, to Section 109, which is attempt to murder, to Section 34 of the older Indian Penal Code from a case in 2023, which states that 'when multiple people commit a crime in furtherance of a common intention, each person is liable for the crime as if they were the only person involved.'
The police have even filed a case under the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 (SC/ST Act), which is a positive-discrimination law meant to protect the most vulnerable people in India. This particular case pertains to one of the most notorious touts of Galli, who comes from a Scheduled Tribe. He alleged the villagers discriminated against him after he had ‘been visiting the office of the Gondalpura Coal Mine Project’, that his neighbours entered his house and beat him up.
‘There was never any beating up,’ said Arun Kumar, the keeper of the village’s register of cases.
In one case, an outsider from Beheriabad in Uttar Pradesh, who works as a security officer ‘at the Gondulpara coal mine project of Adani Enterprises’, was allegedly held hostage by ‘about 60-70 agitated villagers. This outsider claimed he could name over 30 villagers and their spouses and family members!
When Vikas was imprisoned for 31 days, it wasn’t the first time this had happened to people from Gondalpura. In 2007, a man called Manoj from Gondalpura went to jail with villagers of Badam when they were protesting against Eastern Minerals & Trading Agency, a mining company, a conflict the people ultimately won.
Deepak Das, from the next-door village of Badam, was arrested in that case that now belongs to folklore. He is a well-known ex-Sarpanch of Badam, and he says, ‘now they don’t want to arrest anyone because we hear from the companies that they don’t want to alienate people. They want to win people over.’
‘But once mining starts, they will arrest everyone who opposed the projects.’
Arun and Vinay feel that is a reality.
The villagers were quite vocal about how many laws the companies break, and how the cases against protesters are either fabricated or minor at most.
‘First tell us, who is violating the constitution? The companies or us? Who is not respecting the Gram Sabha (village council)?’ asks Vinay.
‘When the Gram Sabha has already said no to you, on what legal basis can you continue working here?’
‘The NTPC will destroy hectares of forests, but when we cut a single tree, they come after us. Will they put NTPC-Adani in jail for destroying thousands of hectares of forests?’
Both of them know that the destruction of forests is catastrophic for climate change. Vikas says that if the company plants trees in different regions to offset the destruction of their own region, ‘what is it to us?’
‘They don’t even follow their own laws. The Land Acquisition Act says that you can’t mine in a region when the Gram Sabha says no. When 80% of the population says no.’
‘The Forest Department went to demarcate the forest in the night. Why? Because they knew they were doing illegal work.’
‘They were putting markers for forest clearance in the night because they were afraid of the people.’
‘Who is really breaking the laws?’ This is a question astutely thrown back at those who have filed cases against a people defending a constitution, defending a forest, defending a village, defending a culture, defending a way of life.
