P. Sainath

Photographs

Purusottam Thakur

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“Here is your
gift,” said Behari Lakra, member of the local ‘beneficiary committee’ to Teresa
Lakra, sarpanch of the Tetra gram panchayat in Gumla district. And thrust 5,000
rupees in her hand. Teresa had no idea that the ‘gift’ was 5,000 in cash. Nor
did she actually get the money – because, at that very moment, an
Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) team from Ranchi closed in on the sarpanch and
arrested her for seeking “illegal gratification” under the Prevention of
Corruption Act, 1988.

The action
shattered Teresa, 48, an Adivasi of the Oraon tribe, and shocked the over
80,000 people of Basia block in Jharkhand where her panchayat is located. No
one seemed to think it odd that an ACB team had come all the way from Ranchi to
this spot nearly 100 kilometres away – it took me over two hours in an SUV – to
make an arrest on a bribe-taking charge of 5,000 rupees. Though the judge she
was hauled up before, apparently remarked on it. The ACB team’s travel by car
both ways would have taken around five hours and would in itself have cost them
half that sum, leave alone other expenses.

Nor was it thought
curious that Teresa had been taken to the spot – the Basia block panchayat
office – by fellow gram panchayat members. The very persons who subsequently
testified against her as witnesses. No less peculiar was that the team
arresting Teresa, as she points out, “did not take me to the Basia police
station” – right opposite the block panchayat office. Barely metres away from
the scene of the drama. Instead, “they drove me to a police station in Kamdara
block some 10-15 kilometres away.”

That was around
June 2017. 

Looking back, the
Class 12 pass out realises that this was because, “in the Basia police station,
everyone knows me. They all know I am not a criminal.” Subsequently, her case
came up before a special court in Ranchi.

Teresa Lakra spent
the next two months and 12 days in jail before coming out on bail. She was
suspended from her post of sarpanch (called ‘mukhia’ in Jharkhand) within three
days of her being arrested. Power in the panchayat moved at the same time to
her deputy, the very upa sarpanch Govind Baraik who had kept asking her on
phone to urgently come to Basia panchayat office. 

And a number of
leases and contracts were signed and handed out while she was in jail, though
it is not clear what all they related to.

The drama and her
arrest caused great anguish to Teresa, her husband and two children, both
daughters. “The older one, Sarita, is 25 and married,” she told us. “She
studied till Class 12.” The younger one, Angela, is 18. She is presently in
Class 12 and intends to study further. Teresa’s husband Rajesh Lakra is the
only member of the family to have made it to college. But despite his B. Com qualification,
he and Teressa have chosen not to migrate to the cities but to live and farm in
Tetra village.

Traumatic as her
removal from the post and her incarceration was, the deposed mukhia did not
throw in the towel. “I was devastated. I was extremely sad,” she says. But on
coming out of jail, Teresa took on the cabal she believed had set her up. 

“I fought my
removal from the post, which was illegally done,” she told me in Tetra village
in the gram panchayat of the same name. She had been ousted when court
proceedings had not begun, let alone a verdict handed down. Teresa took her
battle to the State Election Commission (SEC) and confronted the bureaucracy in
Ranchi with her illegal removal.

“I made 12-14
trips to Ranchi over months to the SEC and other offices. It cost me a great
deal of money,” says Teresa. Yet justice, though delayed as always, was done.
At least in that aspect of her tragedy. It took her a little over a year, but she
emerged with an order for her restoration to the post of mukhia. And upa
sarpanch Govind Baraik who had wielded power during her time in jail, was cut
to size. 

All those expenses
were borne by a family owning five acres of rain-fed land from which they earn
not much more than 2 lakhs of rupees a year. They grow paddy, ragi and urad (black gram) for the market. And groundnut, corn, potatoes and onions for their
own consumption.

But the order she
obtained from the SEC more than a year after her illegal ouster was something
of a triumph. 

“The block
development officer (BDO) Basia quickly acted on the order, and I was restored
to the post of mukhia within a week of the SEC directive,” says Teresa, with a
very small smile. That was around September 2018.

In fact, the coup
survivor ended up being mukhia for nearly seven years, overall. Her five-year
term was nearing its end when the Covid-19 pandemic set in. With panchayat
elections being placed on hold during the pandemic, the period added two years
to her term as mukhia of the roughly 5,000 people of Tetra gram panchayat. The official
record, even for the year she was in political wilderness will now show her
name as mukhia for seven years.

Teresa is known
across the panchayat for having turned down a 10-lakh-rupee bribe from a big
contractor seeking to lease and destroy a nearby hillock in Solangbira village
in her panchayat for rock chips. But she spent time in jail on a charge of
accepting 5,000 rupees as a bribe.

There was a lot
about the manner of Teresa’s arrest that remains curious. Why would a bribe
giver want to hand out money in public – unless that was a pre-decided
strategy? Why would she have received multiple calls from fellow panchayat
members, including upa sarpanch Govind Baraik, urging her to come speedily to
the block panchayat office when she was busy working elsewhere, she asks.

So, what was the
‘bribe’ about?

“There was this anganwadi
(rural mother and childcare centre) which was in bad shape. I saw that
funds were allocated for it. I got it repaired,” says Teresa. As with all such
matters, a ‘beneficiary committee’ came up around the anganwadi repair
project. “This Behari Lakra was a member of that committee. There was 80,000
rupees left over after completion of the work and he was supposed to return it
to us. Govind Baraik kept phoning me to come urgently to Basia block panchayat
office. And I went there.”

There was no reason
the money had to be returned at the Basia BP office and not at the Tetra gram
panchayat. Moreover, she had not even entered the office when Behari Lakra came
up to her. That’s when the drama of thrusting 5,000 rupees on her – in notes
treated to retain fingerprints – unfolded. And when Teresa’s nightmare began.

However, that
‘bribe’ scandal seems to track back to another – of a bribe not taken.

Teresa traces the
frame up back to her rejection of that huge bribe offer from the big
contractor. Though she is much more vociferous in criticising her fellow
panchayat members. Perhaps the contractor being linked to a very powerful
politician with a nationwide reach makes her chary of revealing more.

“There was this
big project, road-laying and other things,” says Teresa. “They were breaking
rock chips from the hillock in our area, and I mobilised people against that. Otherwise,
they would have destroyed the entire hillock. I could not let that happen.” At
one point they even came to her with a document which, they claimed, showed
they had received approval from the gram sabha. 

“There were many
signatures, including some of people who are illiterate and do not know how to
sign their names,” she smiles. The whole thing was a forgery. But we’re
puzzled. How could they hold a gram sabha meeting without the mukhia? Shouldn’t
she be calling it?

That’s when Sunny,
a social worker in these areas, reminds me we are in PESA territory. That is, areas
falling under the Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas Act, 1996. “Here,” he
points out, “the gram sabha can be called by the village traditional head.” In
any case, Teresa rejected the document as fake.

Next came a real
bribe offer – of 10 lakh rupees from the minions of the big contractor. Which
Teresa flatly turned down, offended that they thought she could be bought that
way.

And barely 3-4
months later, the ‘bribe’ frame-up unfolded. At the end of it all, the
contractor was in possession of one of the two hillocks he was after. 

Interestingly,
Teresa never once denies she would have accepted a gift in kind, of a modest or
traditional nature. “I never sought money,” she says. “In all such projects
here, there are these gifts given and taken. I too,” she says with complete
honesty, “would have accepted that.” It is not just in Jharkhand, though, that
gifts accompany such transactions. The nature of the gift may vary – but the
practice exists in all states of the country. There are, of course, individual mukhias
and panchayat members who do not accept gifts of any kind. But that is not the
dominant trend.

Despite her
fightback against the group that framed her, Teresa Lakra’s problems are not
over yet. Six years after her frame up, the legal case continues, a drain on
her resources and energy. She needs help – but also needs to be careful where
it comes from.

She has learnt to be
wary of contractors bearing gifts. Cover photo: Purusottam Thakur

Beware of contractors bearing gifts

تحفہ دینے والے ٹھیکہ داروں سے ہوشیار!

బహుమతులతో వచ్చే కాంట్రాక్టర్ల పట్ల జాగ్రత్త వహించండి

பரிசுகள் கொடுக்கும் ஒப்பந்ததாரர்களிடம் எச்சரிக்கை வேண்டும்

ਤੋਹਫ਼ੇ ਦੇਣ ਵਾਲ਼ੇ ਠੇਕੇਦਾਰਾਂ ਤੋਂ ਸਾਵਧਾਨ ਰਹੋ

ଉପହାରବାଲା ଠିକାଦାରଙ୍କ ପ୍ରତି ସାବଧାନ

लाच घ्यायला नकार, ‘लाचखोरी’ची शिकार

സമ്മാനം നൽകുന്ന കരാറുകാരെ സൂക്ഷിക്കുക

ಎಚ್ಚರಿಕೆ, ಉಡುಗೊರೆ ನೀಡುವ ಗುತ್ತಿಗೆದಾರರಿದ್ದಾರೆ

ભેટ લઈને આવતા કોન્ટ્રાક્ટરોથી સાવધાન

घूस नई लिस त होगे ‘घूस’ कांड

ভেট হাতে আসা ঠিকেদার হইতে সাবধান!

উপহাৰৰ টোপোলাধাৰী ঠিকাদাৰৰ পৰা সাৱধান

तोहफ़े देने वाले ठेकेदारों से होशियार!

भेंट देवे वाला ठिकेदार से तनी बच के!

Tetra

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Beware of contractors bearing gifts

Teresa Lakra of Tetra village in Jharkhand’s Gumla district, learns the hard way what happens when the sarpanch of a small gram panchayat acts against the wishes of the powerful

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