Meena Khalkho liked spending time in the thick, almost pristine forest surrounding her home in Karcha village of Surguja. During her countless hours there, she would give names to the birds and animals she found. Now the same jungle holds the secret to her death  was Meena a Naxal, "habitual about sex" as the police have branded her; or was she just a 16-year-old who went out to meet a friend and was raped and killed in this remote, Maoist-dominated area of Chhattisgarh, as the villagers believe?

"First they (police) raped and killed her, then they termed her a Naxali and now call my daughter a charkati (slut). It hurts the most," says Buddheswar Khalkho after a long, painful silence.

Meena's mother Gutiyari, sitting beside him outside their crumbling hut, can't understand how the girl who loved animals got slapped with charges of being a Naxal. "She would go with me to graze our goats the whole day or stay at home. Why do they speak such things?" says Gutiyari.

From the Uraon tribe, this BPL family has five goats. Younger sister Sajanthi, 14, says Meena had names for all of them  "Sukhini, Sukta, Surila, Bhootni, Ladhgudni".

"Meena dropped out of school after Class V. I often teased her that she left studies as she wanted to roam free with cattle in the forest," says Sajanthi, pointing to a pond and the adjoining hills.

It's a beautiful landscape  thick trees, streams and Chunchuna hills, bordering Jharkhand. The Chunchuna hills and the forests, untouched by symbols of modernity including electricity, form part of the Naxal "liberated zone".

On the evening of July 5, Meena left home to venture into this jungle saying she was going to see a friend. Two-three kilometres away from Karcha, near Chando village, she was caught in an "encounter".

... contd.

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