Mumbai: In the 1980s, it was not uncommon for the youth of Kadavendi village in Warangal district, Andhra Pradesh to abruptly drop out of school and college and vanish overnight to join armed struggles. Every household had a story to tell. The second phase of the Telangana struggle, which reignited in the early 1980s, was at its peak, and Kadavendi had become a hotbed for both separate Telangana and Maoist movements. But that was not the path that Gumudavelli Renuka chose for herself. Renuka was barely in college when her parents decided to marry her off –possibly out of fear that she, like her brother G.V.K. Prasad, might turn to armed struggle. The marriage failed soon after. Renuka, who had endured her husband’s constant violence for some time, eventually walked out. “This was the first time she questioned patriarchy,” shares Prasad, now a surrendered Maoist and a journalist at a Telugu channel. Renuka was killed in police firing in Bijapur district of South Chhattisgarh on March 31. The Dantewada police, who led the operation, claimed she died in an “encounter” – a claim consistently made in all such killings, raising doubts about its veracity. Fifty-four-year-old Renuka, who spent nearly three decades in the Naxal movement as both an overground worker and an underground guerrilla, was also a “great short story writer” and a “splendid journalist,” Prasad recalls. When she died, Renuka was the Dandakarya Special Zonal Committee member and carried a prize money of Rs 45 lakh-Rs 25 lakh announced by the Chhattisgarh state government and Rs 20 lakh by the Telangana government. The Gumudavellis come from Padmashali, or weavers’ community, classified as a Backward community in both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. A mixed-caste village, Kadavendi mostly had landless families or families with meagre landholdings. “Even the Reddys (usually a landed community) in the village were mostly landless,” Prasad says. Prasad joined the movement in the mid-1980s while still in school. Renuka, two years his junior, showed no such inclination at the time. “But after her marriage failed, she began questioning familial structures. She once wrote me a long letter asking how Marxists viewed patriarchy and addressed the daily struggles of women within patriarchal systems. I could see a churning had begun within her,” he told The Wire. The broken marriage, in a way, set her free, he says. She soon travelled to a distant district of Chittoor to pursue law. While still a law student, Renuka became a part of a women’s group, Mahila Shakti, a group working on issues like dowry deaths and sanitation. Soon she started writing for the revolutionary monthly magazine Mahila Margam. On completion of her law education, she moved to Visakhapatnam, where she worked as a lawyer. By 1996, Renuka had already begun working as an overground Naxal leader, writing short stories, organising meetings, and providing legal support for families of those underground. While Gumudavelli Renuka’s younger brother went on to become a lawyer and worked with different human rights organisations in the region, she decided to go underground. Photo: By arrangementRenuka took up several pen names. In early 2003, when her younger brother, along with their parents, were on their way to meet Prasad, a fugitive then, in the forest, the police had apprehended them and tortured the brother. Renuka used her legal education to fight for his release from illegal detention. In that incident, a young girl named Damayanti was killed in police firing, and soon Renuka began writing under the name B.D. Damayanti. “Most of her journalistic work (published in the party mouthpiece) was under this byline,” Prasad says. Among some of her best writing works, Prasad says, is the one she wrote on the violence unleashed on the Adivasis of Bastar by the state-sponsored militia group Salwa Judum. She also wrote about land displacement and the depleting resources of the tribal communities. She also used the name Midko, a Gondi word for fireflies, to write her short stories. Later, in the party, she was also known as Bhanu or Chaite. In late 2003, her younger brother was arrested as a part of the widespread arrests that followed in the state in the aftermath of a bid to “assassinate” the then chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, N. Chandrababu Naidu. He was tortured in the custody but was eventually acquitted of all charges. While the brother went on to become a lawyer and worked with different human rights organisations in the region, Renuka decided to go underground. In 2004, she had joined the guerrilla movement. A small-framed woman, she soon took up arms training. According to Prasad, while both of them were underground they seldom met. “We were a part of different units and also moved in very different regions,” he recalls. In 2005, Gumudavelli Renuka remarried another party commander, and he too was killed in police firing in 2010. Photo: By arrangementHaving joined the movement, Renuka’s quest for love persisted. Around 1997, while she was still overground, a senior party leader separately suggested it to both Renuka and Santosh Reddy, the then party’s Andhra Pradesh state committee secretary as well as a central committee member, to consider marriage. Although from the same Kadavendi village, Reddy had moved out to join the movement many years ago. They barely knew each other. On one occasion, sometime in 1997, Renuka went into the jungles of Nallamala in Andhra Pradesh to meet Reddy and seek his suggestions in dealing with the problems the party was facing in its Tirupati unit. They soon fell in love. Since Reddy was a senior party leader and Renuka was still an overground worker, they had to keep their marriage secret. On December 2, 1999, Reddy was killed in a police firing. “Renuka couldn’t even openly claim the marriage or just cry her heart out. Her love life always had a tragic ending. She truly loved Santosh,” Prasad says. In 2005, Renuka remarried another party commander, and he too was killed in police firing in 2010. Contrary to the popular notion, Prasad says Renuka’s entry into the armed movement didn’t happen because of him. He attributes it to many things – from the political atmosphere in the region to Renuka’s slowly developing critical faculty. “She was her own person, who was deeply disturbed by things happening around her and would question,” he recalls. When the news of Renuka’s death broke and he was informed by a local superintendent of police in Telangana, Prasad was at work. He says the news of her killing shook him, but he knew that is how her life would end. “Every morning, my wife [who also surrendered along with Prasad in 2014] would scan through all newspapers and channels to see if any new killing had taken place in the [Bastar] region. My mother in Hyderabad would do the same. In the past year, the government has brutally killed hundreds in the name of combatting the Maoist movement. There has been no dialogue, simply cold-blooded murder,” he says. Prasad travelled to Dantewada to receive Renuka’s body, which the cops had wrapped in a polythene bag and kept for display. “Until this moment, I had assumed that Renuka was killed along with other comrades.” Just a day before, 17 Naxals were killed in the neighbouring Sukma district. That is when, Prasad says, he got suspicious. “Renuka, who never wore any earrings or bindi, was seen wearing them suddenly. This could only mean she was moving around in a village and had lived a regular life in a village here. Then why did the police not simply capture her,” he asks. When G.V.K. Prasad and his wife took Gumudavelli Renuka’s body back to their native Kadavendi, thousands of people from across the region had gathered. Photo: By arrangementThe police have claimed that Renuka was killed in a “fire exchange” on the “Dantewada-Bijapur border” along the banks of the Indravati river. Her hands, the family say, were mutilated, suggesting either torture in the hands of the police force or an intentional tactic to erase any forensic evidence after killing her. A cache of ammunition was shown, allegedly found with her. The police allowed a post-mortem to be conducted on her body, but the report was not made available to the family. On April 2, the Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee of the banned CPI (Maoist) organisation issued a press note, in which they have claimed that Renuka was captured from a small house in Belnar village in Bhairamgadh block of Bijapur district. Here, the press note says, Renuka had been living since she was not keeping well. “The police gheraoed her house around 4 am on March 31. Around 9-10 am, they took Chaite (a name by which she was known in the banned party) towards Indravati river and killed her,” the Maoists have claimed in the press note. With over 400 killings in the region, which include both from the armed movement and several civilians, the banned Maoist organisation, in the press note, has conveyed that they want to have a dialogue with the government. When Prasad and his wife took Renuka’s body back to their native Kadavendi, thousands of people from across the region had gathered. She was given a martyr’s farewell, Prasad says.
