Since 2024, approximately 589 people, including civilians, security forces, and Maoists/Naxalites, have been killed in Chhattisgarh. And we’re only halfway through 2025. More people have died in these 18 months than in the five years from 2019 to 2023 (534 persons).

In June and July, I read through NHRC complaints filed since January 2024, focusing on the seven districts that make up the Bastar Division: Bastar, Bijapur, Dantewada, Kanker, Kondagaon, Narayanpur and Sukma.

This article focuses on the past year and a half, that is, 2024 and the first half of 2025, a period marked by a sudden increase in deaths. These records tell a story about the state’s relationship with those it has killed. They also reveal the failures of an institution meant to protect human rights in the first place.

Counting the Dead

So far, we know these people mostly as “numbers.” The South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP) gives us a breakdown:

• All-India: 1,095
• Maoist-insurgency related: 736
• Chhattisgarh alone: 589
• Bastar Division (7 districts): Not available

Chhattisgarh alone accounts for nearly 54% of the all-India total, and around 80% of the Maoist-insurgency related deaths during this period. These figures raise a basic but unsettling question: Who are the dead?

So, I turned to the NHRC, the official record of these deaths. NHRC complaints are publicly available, or at least, some of the information is. These complaints are submissions made by individuals regarding possible human rights violations, which then leads to a process involving police, medical and administrative reports. 

In cases of 'encounter' deaths, the complaint is usually filed by the Superintendent of Police (SP). They are required to notify the NHRC of all encounters within 48 hours and to send all related documents within three months, following a Supreme Court petition by the People’s Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL).

When I checked the victims’ names, I came across the word “unknown” more often than I came across actual names: “Unknown Naxalites. Unknown Maoists. Or Unknown males and Unknown females.”

Their address and village? “Unknown.”

Some complaints from Bijapur district, where the Karregutta operation occurred in April this year, are shown below. The first page of results was filled with vague entries, with repetitive words such as “unknown” persons and numeric placeholders. (Figure 1)

More unknowns and numbers appeared on the second page, along with misspellings such as moists, moaists and moiasts. Some were labelled Naxalites, others Maoists. The terms changed, but the essence of ambiguity remained the same. (Figure 2)

The inconsistencies and contradictions become more apparent as one goes through the list. In one complaint dated March 28, 2024, the gender count changed from “4 male, 2 female” to “5 female, 1 male.” (Figure 3) In another complaint dated February 12. 2025, 20 men and 11 women were all logged as male. (Figure 4)

These are not small errors, but repetitive patterns. These are not data gaps, they are human ones. They erase identity and even gender. The repetitive “patterns of errors” begin to appear suspicious, as if the ambiguity is deliberate.

One entry recorded the death of a six-month-old baby on January 1, 2024 in cross-firing. The case was closed on September 9, 2024 with a compensation of Rs 7 lakhs (Figure 5). No more details were mentioned in the complaint. It is unclear if an investigation was conducted or if the compensation even reached the concerned person? 

In a complaint about an incident that took place on March 20, 2024, an unknown number of “people” died in a police encounter, and no action has been taken yet by the NHRC. (Figure 6)

When, if ever, will their identities be revealed? And what will be lost in the meantime? Even when more information becomes available to the NHRC, it’s rarely updated on the website. The public only sees a fraction of the complaints. Once entered as an unknown death, it stays that way on the website. Questions about whether the body has not been identified or if it has not been claimed remain unanswered.

Although the NHRC lists multiple documents it requires from the police and administration – such as medical records, police reports and post-mortem findings – all these, even when produced, pass through a system that too easily forgets the identities and human lives behind these complaints. (Figure 7)

Why does this matter?

As these unknowns were logged in the NHRC database, the dead, each marked by a different number, remained unidentified by their families in Bastar.

Over the past year and a half, while the NHRC continued its complaints process, sending reminders to the police and administration to submit required documents, villagers claimed several of those killed in the encounters were civilians. In one incident on May 12, 2024, villagers said ten of the 12 alleged Maoists killed were actually civilians. Yet the NHRC, the country’s highest human rights body, set up in accordance with United Nations (UN) principles, chose to remain silent. It saw no need for a suo motu fact-finding or enquiry into such a large number of deaths in a single incident.

In 2012, the NHRC declared 16 out of 19 'encounters' in Andhra Pradesh as fake, based on a complaint filed in 2002. It ordered Rs 5 lakhs in compensation per victim. A decade of injustice and a human life valued at Rs 5 lakhs.

In Chhattisgarh, while people and children were buried without names, complaints were quietly closed with the occasional compensation order, and most cases remained pending. 

I’ve reviewed nearly 40 complaints from Bijapur filed over the last 18 months, all linked to police encounters, firing or Improvised Explosive Device (IED)-related deaths. Among these, I’ve come across just two instances where the NHRC passed compensation orders. However, it's unclear if the people ever received the money. There’s no update on the website, no sign that the NHRC followed-up or verified whether the compensation was actually delivered.

This isn’t new. In the past too, we have seen instances where despite NHRC orders, villagers never received compensation. For example, in the 2009 Salwa Judum killings, families hadn’t even heard of the compensation two months after the already delayed 2019 order. By the time the order came, people had lost interest in the compensation amount and refused to take it, since no punitive action was taken against the perpetrators.

In a 2016 case involving the fake arrests of lawyers from Telangana who spent six months in jail, the NHRC ordered a compensation of Rs 1 lakh each. One of the lawyers confirmed that he hadn’t received it. 

The NHRC in 2019 ordered compensation in an October 2015 case from Bijapur, involving a series of rapes, gang rapes, and assaults of Adivasi women by police and security forces across five villages. The court pronounced its final order in the case in February 2020, in which it noted that the women had refused the money as the perpetrators had not been punished. The NHRC then directed the collector to deposit the money in fixed deposits under their names and noted that if unclaimed within two years, the collector could “use it for some social benefits.”

At the same time, the order stated that the criminal investigation was still ongoing and a report would be submitted within four weeks. But even as the case was closed, there was no update on whether the victims got justice, or if the investigation was ever completed. (Figure 8).

What purpose do these 'unknowns' serve?

The public is left with incomplete information and numbers and, when rarely given, only compensation amounts. These are not clerical mistakes. They are political acts of erasure, of forgetting. 

The NHRC was created to hold power accountable. But it seems to have become a scribe for the state, recording violence without truth and misusing the word “unknown". What happens when an institution meant to protect rights becomes complicit in erasing them? What does justice look like when names are missing?

These names matter. For memory, accountability and justice.

The NHRC needs to reform how it handles cases of human rights violations. It must recognise the dead as people and not just as numbers or tags. It should update records when new information comes in. If compensation is ordered, it must verify that it reaches the families or victims. But compensation alone cannot replace justice. Investigations should be conducted transparently and thoroughly. Contradictions in the facts should be questioned. And when the situation demands, it must use its powers to initiate independent enquiries.

Soumya Lamba is an independent researcher.

Note: The numbers cited in the piece were updated by the SATP on July 27, 2025 and accessed on July 29, 2025.

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