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A COMMUNIST activist in India has been murdered by “forest mafia” for organising resistance to illegal logging.
Dumra Tudu of the AIKS – the farmers’ and peasants’ front of the Communist Party of India-Marxist – died in hospital yesterday after a brutal assault on October 4.
Mr Tudu had been organising among the Adivasi indigenous forest-dwelling communities to protest against the destruction of their environment.
Deforestation in India has massively accelerated under the Narendra Modi government, which has removed the residence rights of an estimated eight million Adivasis, ostensibly on environmental grounds.
However, the Adivasi lands have been sold for logging and the creation of 40 new coalfields auctioned for private exploitation – a first for India, where the coal industry had been publicly owned.
Mr Tudu was leading resistance in Jamtara in Jharkhand, one of four Indian states that have written to the central government in protest over the forest auctions.
