State of Siege – Report on Encounters and Cases of Sexual Violence in Bijapur and Sukma districts of Chhattisgarh

On 14 January 2016, a combined team of Coordination of Democratic Rights Organizations (CDRO), Women Against Sexual Violence and State Repression (WSS), conducted a fresh fact-finding in the Sukma and Bijapur districts in Chhattisgarh. Initially the objectives of the fact-finding mission was to investigate cases of encounter killings, supposed “surrenders” by Maoists and atrocities against tribal women in the villages in the intervening period of 3 months since the last fact-finding of WSS. However, the intensity and frequency of reported attacks, that the team learnt of once they were in the area, compelled them to limit the focus of the fact-finding to events that happened in the course of one week, between the 11th and the 15th of January.