A murder that revealed a ‘cult’ and its overreach
Satyabrat Nayak’s house is hard to distinguish in the rows of thatched, asbestosroofed homes with laterite stone walls covered in patchy plaster. Like most others in Abhimanpur -- a village of roughly 60 families from the Saara community, who believe they are adivasis but are not listed as tribals in government records -- the Nayak family has little of material value other than a small television set. Till early August, their biggest worry was whether the paddy they cultivated would wither away due to the lack of rain in the region.
Then, on the morning of August 2, his family’s quiet life was torn asunder. News arrived that Nayak had died, a day after he was abducted by people from the Manavbadi Sangathan, an organisation he was a member of since its inception in 2005. On that morning, the family said some members of the Sangathan came to Abhimanpur and asked Nayak’s nephew Basant to accompany them to the neighbouring Karadagadia village. What Basant found was the body of his uncle lying on a funeral pyre. A gun pointed at him, Basant was allegedly forced to set the body on fire.
Basant’s complaint at the Begunia police station unravelled a series of events that have led to eight arrests and the dismantling of an organisation that said it fought for the rights of the Saaras, but implemented its life
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principles in the harshest manner possible. These included assault and abuse, and in the case of Satyabrat Nayak, murder. Among the eight arrested are Manas Das, lawyer, politician and the 51-year-old president of the Manavbadi Sangathan, and his 25-year-old son Manoranjan Das. They have been charged in several cases, including homicide.
“Das and his son were arrested over the involvement in the conspiracy to murder Nayak, who was once a member of Manvbad Sangathan but had stopped being an active member. Though they were not present at the scene of murder, they played a role in the conspiracy,” said inspector general of police (central range) Narasingha Bhol. “We suspect that he (Das) is involved in many past cases, and if anyone has any evidence, we welcome people to lodge FIRS against him.”
Several Dalit and tribal leaders who have been working for the disadvantaged in Odisha say that Das used poverty and existing social fault lines to create a “cult” in Khurda district.
A Dalit and the son of a peon in state secretariat, Das joined the Bahujan Samaj Party in 1990s, and left it in 1999 to start the Rashtriya Samajik Nyay Manch, a forum that promised to deliver social justice to Dalits and tribals. As he started getting traction, he formed another organisation, the Manavbad Sangathan (humanitarian organisation).
“While heading the Rashtriya Samajik Nyay Manch, he met a lot of Saara community people of Bolgarh and Begunia areas of Khurda district, and lured them to the Manavbad Sangathan, which he built like a cult. The members of the Sangathan were supposed to live by a set of rules that included no idol worship, women not wearing bangles or vermillion, and a ban on last rites. Those joining the organisation had to take a pledge that they would not consume drugs or alcohol. While he could not get tribals to join his organisation, he managed to get a lot of Saara community people as his followers,” said Ashok Mallick, president of the Rashtriya Dalit Mahasabha, which also works for tribals and Dalits in Odisha.
Satyabrat Nayak, who is a Saara, was among Das’s first recruits, and had become a senior member. Like other Saaras, Nayak proudly called himself a descendant of Biswabasu, a mythical Sabara tribal chief. Though Sabaras are deemed as tribals, the Saara community, which follows the same religious and cultural practices as them, doesn’t share the same status.
The tehsildar of Begunia, Prithviraj Mandal, said the lack of ST status is mostly because of revenue records. “They may be following the same practices of Sabara and Sohar tribes, but most of the Saara community members either live on government land or don’t have necessary land records that show them to be tribals,” he said.
It was this sense of injustice -STS get benefits such as assistance for businesses and reservation in education and government jobs -- that Das sought to tap into when he first began making trips to the district in early 2000s. Jharia Nayak, the neighbour of Satyabrata Nayak, who was also a member of Manavbadi Sangathan, said that Saaras are still not allowed to worship the deity in Swapneswar Shiva temple in their village.
“We can enter the temple, but have to keep our offerings to God and draw back before the priest collects it,” said Jharia.
Local fault lines
Another local, Sanuj Nayak was one of those who joined the Sangathan driven by a sense of discrimination and inspired by the belief, having listened to Das, that he was “Dravidian, not Aryan”.
“I had joined the organisation in 2013... We were told about the years of discriminations that tribals faced at the hands of upper caste people. We were told that
Saara people are not Aryans, but Dravidians. The Aryans were our enemies. But we were never told why they were our enemies. We were told that we he would get Saara community the tribal status. But I left the organisation a few years later,” said Nayak, who left his house in Dalatola village of Begunia a few years ago after facing threats from members of Manavbad Sangathan.
The whole point of signing up was that those who joined the organisation were expected to do so for life. Any deviation was punished swiftly.
“Though Satyabrata Nayak was among his oldest followers, and had indoctrinated a lot of people, he had lost interest in last two years, more so after Covid pandemic last year. He was asked to get his brother-in-law, who ran a parallel organisation of the Saaras called Nilamadhab Sangathan, to join the Manavbad Sangathan. He could not fulfil that. The day Nayak was killed, a 60-year-old man and his 35-yearold son in Kadaba village in Begunia were being thrashed at the same time for not getting any new members. A case was lodged later,” said a police officer who asked not to be named.
On August 1, Satyabrat Nayak was called to a meeting in Abhimanpur to explain why he couldn’t get his brother-in-law to join the group. As soon as Satyabrat reached the meeting, Swapneswar Nayak -- a senior member of the Manavbadi Sangathan -- and others allegedly started beating him. He was then let go, but not for long.
When night crept in, around 8pm, Swapneswar and Tulu Behera, another member of the Sangathan, allegedly picked up Satyabrat in a motorcycle at a nearby village square. SDPO Mishra said investigations found that Satyabrat was attacked again with PVC pipes, sticks and kicked repeatedly, likely leading to his death.
The next day, Swapneswar came to Satyabrat’s house in the village and asked his nephew Basant to follow. “Swapneswar took me to a cashew orchard at Karadagadia village where I found my uncle’s body on a pyre... When I asked them to explain how my uncle died, someone put a gun on my head and I was asked to light the pyre,” said Basant.
Sociologist Rita Ray said organisations such as Manavbad Sangathan exploiting social fault lines is not new. “Already low on development indices and literacy levels, there will always be someone who will promise revolution. As long as social and economic disparities remain, these will always exist,” she said.
‘Bhaisahab’ to ‘Guruji’
In the initial years of starting the Sangathan, Das asked people to call him “Bhaisaheb” (elder brother), apparently on the lines of “Babasaheb”, as Dalit icon BR Ambedkar was called. Later, he asked his followers to call him by the epithet “Guruji”. People who became members of his organisation had to attend training camps and pay ₹50-100 for each camp. Every year on May 16, he organised a Manavbad Diwas, where Das talked about injustices done to the tribals.
Structured like a pyramid, the Manavbad Sangathan has hundreds of followers who attend meetings and take a pledge not to worship idols or follow rituals. “All Aryans are my enemies and I would always treat them as my enemies,” the pledge entails. After working for a few years and depending on performance, a follower gets promoted to “cadre” and then “senior cadre”. “A few of the senior cadre would go on to become ‘top cadre’ who stay close to Das. The cadres for each panchayat send monthly reports about the work they did in getting new recruits. Each of the cadres get regular monthly remuneration,” said a former member on condition of anonymity.
Das lived in Bhubaneswar’s Shahid Nagar. “He called his house in Bhubaneswar the “headquarters”, and anyone just entering his gate had to pay ₹20 to ₹70. For an audience with him, the charges were higher. As he had more than 10,000 followers, the income was sizeable,” said Khurda sub-divisional police officer Sushil Mishra. The police are now planning to track Das’s investments over the years.
Mishra said Das began asking tribals to take up issues of land but by using violent methods. “He would motivate members to attack leaseholders of such cashew nut orchards telling them that the entire property belongs to tribals. When the community attacked the leaseholder, mostly an upper caste person, there was an inevitable backlash. In 2010-11, one person was killed during a case like this. He (Das) also started doing the same thing with stone quarrying leases. In March 2016, his people were involved in the murder of owner of a stone crusher in Dadhimachhagadia area of Khurda district.”
Das’s followers, however, argue that he is not guilty. “He has been framed by detractors. He has been trying to bring social equality in Khurda,” said Biranchi Nayak, a follower in Srirampur village of Khurda. On Friday, more than 300 of his supporters staged demonstration before the office of Khurda SP.
Police officers said Das would have become an influential political leader had he not been arrested last week. In February 2019, he appeared to join the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) in the presence of chief minister Naveen Patnaik.
Senior BJD leader Pramila Mallick, however, denied that Das was a member, refusing to comment on the 2019 function. She said, “If Das got photographed with BJD leaders that does not mean he was part of BJD. Let police do its inquiry and take action.”
“In a state where most politicians don’t have much following, Das has over 10,000 followers,” a police officer said, asking not to be named . “He would have successfully negotiated with political parties -- maybe he still can.”