WITH deep sorrow, I share that Munda Badamajhi - illiterate and mentally challenged among Kandhamal's 7 Innocents' passed away early this morning as a 'CONVICTED MURDERER'.
Though the seven INNOCENTS were released on bail from the Supreme Court in 2019 after 11 years behind bars, the Odisha High Court is STILL sitting on their appeal in the 12th year… What a shame for the judiciary?
I would kindly request those who are unfamiliar with the Kandhamal bloodshed of 2008 & Travesty of Justice to watch the documentary 'INNOCENTS IMPRISONED' to comprehend also the stunning conspiracy at www.release7innocents.com in English, Hindi, Odia or Malayalam.
The full text from my investigative book Who Killed Swami Lakshmanananda? about Munda Badamajhi is here. I met Munda last on February 7. 2025 in Kandhamal and was worried about him as he had suffered stroke and could not even smile.
During the launch of the online campaign www.release 7innocents.com on March 3, 2016 with the illiterate wives of the seven at the Constitution Club in New Delhi, Patriarch of Indian journalism Kuldip Nayar asked me: What is wrong with the nation? Mentally challenged Munda’s death as a ‘convicted murderer’ reinforces that question.
By:- Anto Akkara, award-winning journalist
Dumb’ man among seven convicts
Take the case of Munda Badamajhi, 34, who was picked up by the police in his sleep from his house in the night on October 4, 2008 from Duringpodi village under Madaguda panchayat. Bandigudali, his wife, did not shy away from revealing the true character of her beloved from the same village – when I met her at her house in October 2015.
“He would never go outside the village even for buying his own clothes as he could not distinguish between different denominations of notes. I had to buy lungi for him. He had to depend on others for everything,” an illiterate like Munda, Bandigudali said candidly.
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| Munda Badamajhi & the Journalist. |
“He cannot communicate properly. He would not even mix with other village people due to lack of self-confidence or join them for a drinking session. He works in the field, eats and sleeps at home - like an animal. He is like a dumb man,” she confided stopping short of describing her husband an ‘idiot’.
Yet, the judge who convicted the seven accused declared that the prosecutor had argued the case ‘meticulously’ and produced the ‘reliable witnesses’ to prove the charge of murder against the accused.
“It was around midnight when the police came and pushed open the door. They woke him up and tried to take him away. He asked them ‘why are you taking me away?’ They did not reply. I wanted to give him a shawl. But the police did not allow me,” Bandigudali recounted the arrest of her husband. They told her: “We will give him.”
As the police left, she noticed that they had landed up in the village in three vehicles with over two dozen personnel, including women constables.
After three months, Bandigudali came to know that her husband was in Balliguda jail. Together with Badusi, the wife of Sanatan Badamajhi, Bandigudali went to meet him in jail.
Munda told her hat he was ‘tortured badly’ during the detention and that they had even taken him to a ‘distant jail’.
While reiterating that Munda had been at home on August 23 night when he is alleged to have been in the mob of 25-30 people who carried out the murder at the Ashram, Bandigudali is baffled by the prosecution claim that a muzzle-loading gun had been recovered from their house.“We never had a gun and my husband did not know how to handle a gun. This is shocking,” asserted Bandigudali. Further, she pointed out that no police personnel or investigator had ever visited her house to verify such an allegation after the midnight raid.
Yet, the judgment that found the seven accused guilty and convicted them to life imprisonment pointed out: “His (Investigating Officer S K Patnaik’s) evidence with regard to seizure of the muzzle-loading guns from the house of Duryodhan Sanamajhi, Munda Badamajhi and a gun from the house of Sanatan Badamajhi clearly implicate the above accused persons.”
The judge also dismissed the submission of the defence lawyer that “the investigating officer has manufactured the case in order to rope in the accused persons and this court in absence of any corroboration from independent source should not rely upon his evidence. He has shown the seizure of guns at the house of Duryodhan Sanamajhi, Munda Badamajhi and shirt at the house of Sanatan Badamajhi and had attempted to implicate them for some ulterior motive."
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Kindly spare 16 minutes to WATCH this documentary that exposes what is wrong with Indian democracy and why Kandhamal bloodshed happened & why the 7 Innocent Christians were imprionsed and kept behind bars by subverting the judicial system to perpetrate a political Fraud fooling the entire World.
ps: Got them released after 11 years on bail from the Supreme Cout in 2019
"Bear witness to the truth"
With masters in English literature, post graduate diploma in journalism and LL.B from Delhi University, Anto Akkara has been a journalist with Indian and international media for three decades. The journalist author, who firmly believes that 'the pen is mightier than the sword’, has reported extensively from hotspots in South Asia on human rights, religious issues and social problems.
Akkara has to his credit several 'leader' articles for The Times of India - like ‘Tribals are not museum pieces’, ‘Prisons of the Mind (Myanmar)’ and ‘Lankan landmine’ etc - on sensitive topics and his international investigative reports have been carried even in The Washington Post.
He has covered extensively the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka, 2004 tsunami devastation, oppression in Myanmar, and birth of democracy and devastating earthquake that struck Nepal in 2015. In the process, he won a dozen national and international media awards.
For his ‘stellar work’ on Kandhamal conflagration in Odisha state in eastern India, Akkara was conferred the prestigious Titus Brandsma Award for Journalism 2013, instituted in memory of a Dutch journalist Titus Brandsma who was incarcerated for his critical writings against Hitler and died in the infamous Dachau concentration camp in 1942.
In December 2018: Akkara was conferred the ‘Journalist of Substance’ award of Delhi Minorities Commission for his persistent campaign for Truth & Justice for Kandhamal.
Courtesy: https://antoakkara.com/home
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