Kutamal (Rayagada district, Odisha)/Jaipur (Rajasthan): On the afternoon of April 3, Rayagada Police in Odisha imposed a month-long curfew under Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS) across Sunger Panchayat in Kashipur Block of Rayagada District.Kutamal village, one of the 35 hamlets in the Panchayat, was the site of this declaration. While the village is largely being referred to as Kantamal in the media, that is the Odia version of its name. In Kui, the Adivasi language of the region, it is Kutamal.It was clarified by authorities that the curfew is to prohibit the collective movement of villagers in and around Kutamal, as the Industrial Development Corporation of Odisha was to commence the construction of a three-km road from point X to point Y.Point X is the junction between Sagabari and Bichapinda mouza (revenue circle), roughly seven km away from Kutamal where a 12-hectare eucalyptus plantation sits and families from both villages farm. Point Y is the flat-top of Tijmali, a pre-civilisational, indigenous hill that is home to sacred groves, fields and life-sustaining forests of the several Adivasi and mool-nivasi people from the state-categorised Kondh, Paraja and other Kui-speaking tribes as well as other forest dwelling communities like Dom, Dalit and pastoral Goud communities.Fifteen hundred hectares of the Tijmali plateau has been leased to Vedanta Resources Limited for mining bauxite since February 2023, permitted by the Odisha state government to mine nine million tonnes of bauxite per annum for the next 30 years.Since then, Vedanta’s alleged operational illegalities, financial and regulatory non-compliance, the people’s resistance, subsequent militarisation and surveillance, and overall ignorance towards the inevitable loss of civilisational lands, has been documented here, here, here, here, and here.Consent has previously been manufactured via fabricated gram sabhas, and arbitrary arrests are emerging as a norm for the people of Sunger Panchayat.On April 4, over 300 villagers from five villages of Kerpai Panchayat, six villages of Sunger Panchayat and Talampadar village of Talampadar Panchayat stationed themselves in the Bichapinda mouza where the approach-road construction was to begin. The project is led by the Odisha Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation (IDCO), the state’s nodal agency for liaising with private companies to establish industrial projects across Odisha.Currently under legal challenge with an interlocutory application being heard at the National Green Tribunal, Kolkata Bench, the three km road construction is sub-judice.The Rayagada administration responded to the people’s mobilisation around Bichapinda with battalions of police occupying the adjacent stretch of road.When The Wire’s reporter approached the police personnel on site to inquire about their presence, he was rebuffed. An email inquiring about the legitimacy of the road construction, therefore, has been sent to the collector’s office, and this article will be updated upon receiving a response.The protest rendezvous is only 500 metres away from the Sagabari camp, a tent set up three km away from Tijmali plateau. It has been independently built out of bamboo and tarpaulin sheet by the residents of all the above-mentioned villages, to protect Tijmali each night, in rotation, since June 7, 2025.In late May 2025, company field officers of Mythri Infrastructure had begun taking surveys for road construction. Ever since then, people have resided there with a barricade built out of mahua tree branches and wild bushes, to resist logistical operations such as more field-surveying, installation of drilling machines, clearing vegetation, and the likes.Sagabari Camp, stationed six km from Tijmali plateau since July 1, 2025.Barricade built by the people, using mahua tree branches and wild bushes, with two Indian flags.Police-Adivasi standoff at Bichapinda mouza junction on April 5.This standoff with the police continued for three days until the afternoon of April 6, when a large police contingent, in four buses and approximately 20 Bolero vehicles, arrived at the site, accompanied by Rayagada district collector Ashutosh Kulkarni.Kulkarni, via a megaphone, announced that the assembled residents must vacate the hill, we are told. “He asked us why we are here when this hill has been sold, when we don’t ‘own’ it. He told us this land is sold, that we are not meant to be here. ‘Where is your patta (right of records)?’ he kept asking us,” Manjula Majhi, an active voice of resistance and resident from Kutamal, recalls.“We do not understand papers. All we know is that our forefathers worked these hills and they are sacred to us,” she says she responded on site, with echoes of unanimity from the women gathered around her.The protesters allege that Kulkarni then threatened them with a repeat of what had recently unfolded in Talampadar village, nearly 20 km away, sitting at the base of Tijmali.This refers to the March 11 incident wherein 20 one members of the Kondh and Paraja Adivasi communities were arrested from a hamlet near Kutamal before sunrise in a violent course of events. They allegedly indiscriminately picked up people including three minors, one pregnant woman and two couples of over the age of 60. A detailed account of it can be read here.Following the standoff, later at 3 AM on April 7, Sunamati Majhi and Ananda Majhi, two Kondh Adivasi residents of Kutamal who run a roadside shop for the last ten years, witnessed the arrival of armed policemen at the primary school right at the entry point of Kantamal.Sunamati Majhi said that she saw roughly seven men charging towards the gudi sahi (village centre), and so she raced from the other side to alert the rest of her community.“Sunamati came to my door knocking frantically, and when I headed out I noticed someone lock doors of people’s homes further up in the upar sahi (village top) around 3:30 AM. We had to act quickly and wake everyone up without causing commotion. But as we went out to unlock our people’s doors, we were surrounded by flashlights and crowds of men, we thought they were robbers,” Lachmi Dei Majhi, another resident of Kutamal, recalls.Groups of villagers The Wire spoke to roughly 12 hours after recall that the police passed through homes of the Dom community at the tala sahi (village base), pelting stones at people’s asbestos roofs, barging inside and dragging women out, and breaking all but one of the glass windows of a pick-up van.Agadu Naik and Dasrathi Naik’s roof was pelted with stones.The vehicle owned by four families collectively – Agadu, Bishamber, Dharmendra and Sushanta – was used for transporting clothes and goods to the Sunger haat, a local rural market where tribal communities buy, sell or exchange local produce and daily essentials, weekly or biweekly. This is the four families’ primary source of income.The vehicle owned by the families of Agadu, Bishamber, Dharmendra and Sushanta.“We were suddenly woken up in the middle of the night by people who kicked our door open. They all smelled like they had had a lot to drink. There were some people in police uniform, but others were dressed in half uniform and half black, while some were wearing masks,” she shares. “We don’t have land like the rest do, my husband will have to spend Rs 1,500 on a tractor-trailer for even a single trip to the haat if we are to continue living and working, how are we to do that?” Lalita Naik, Dharmendra’s wife, asks, visibly distressed.“I had just woken up and was getting ready to go to bathe around 4 am, so I changed into a towel and left from the front door when I realised in the dark that I was surrounded by small crowds of men, abusing and charging at me with lathis, catching hold of my hands, only to drag me on the ground towards the gudi sahi, while I struggled to resist physically,” Ramchandra Naik says, showing the marks on his back and forearms. “There might have been at least 30-40 of them, meanwhile my son was alone at home.”Ramchandra’s son, 12-year-old Thabiro Naik, took The Wire’s reporter to the other houses adjacent the gudi sahi where Hrutavati (46) and Reena Naik (17) confirmed the capture of Ramchandra Naik.Thobiro’s mother, as well as other Adivasi women around, responded by trying to rescue Ramchandra Naik, but were beaten with lathis in the melee instigated by the khaki uniformed, black clothed and masked group of men.Left: Gravel burn due to dragging on Ramchandra’s lower back; right: graze abrasions on both his forearms.When Ani Dei Majhi, a 60-year-old Adivasi woman, tried to intervene, she was slashed with a knife on her forehead in the dark. She later had to pay Rs 800 for stitches, and clarified, “Rs 800 is what I have earned in the last 3 days, given that police surveillance has been constraining our daily movement.”Ani Dei Majhi and her injuries.As the situation escalated, villagers recall having outnumbered crowds of the police personnel and alleged goons, and surrounded them.In this commotion, villagers suddenly heard gunshot-like sounds, with smoke and fire emerging from within as well as around the periphery and forests of Kutamal. People realised only belatedly that these were teargas bombs, when their children began vomiting incessantly and everybody’s eyes burnt, itched, and watered.Tear-gas shells and a weapon (extreme left) collected by the villagers.Three of the women who experienced the noxious smoke themselves share their children’s episodes of asphyxiation with The Wire.“With all the commotion outside, we got up and left the house. I woke my daughter and son up and carried them with me, as I thought they’d be safer with me, but the whole village was in dense smoke. Prem, my son, could not breathe and it only normalised after two hours of washing his face,” Muni Majhi describes.Muni Majhi with her daughter and son.Bamani Majhi’s nine-month-old son and Hasari Majhi’s two-year-old daughter experienced similar traumas. “Immediately after all the teargas bombs, Prem was very sick. He was crying and vomiting non-stop. He began running a temperature and is still down with a fever,” Bamani told The Wire the next day.Bamani Majhi and Riyad Majhi.“I carried Bhumika while I went into the smoke to be able to help the others, and heard a constant whizzing sound until a teargas bomb landed right next to us. We ran, but Bhumika kept struggling to breathe and cried as she shouted ‘mu moribi mu moribi (I am dying, I am dying!)’,” Bhumika’s mother, Hasari, revisits with Bhumika in her arms.Lalsingh Majhi, a daily-wage mason, is eager to show to The Wire’s reporter his edema and swellings.“I had gone to answer nature’s call much earlier, but when I returned from the stream I noticed a crowd in the gudi sahi with caustic smoke. I ran towards my house but got caught on the way by men in police uniforms. They used their lathis on my face, back and arms. Though I managed to escape, I fainted on my way. I was then carried by others around me and after I regained consciousness everything was calm. But look at my hands, I don’t think I’ll be able to work for the next month,” he says.Lalsingh Majhi’s wheals and bruises on his face and back.Apart from this, villagers have reported the death of one of their cows while others escaped their sheds, marking a grave economic loss for communities dependent on grazing and milking. Each cow costs them Rs 8,000-10,000, and is integral to the farming communities’ harvest and post-harvest periods.Others reported the hay on top of their asbestos roofs catching fire, with children still inside, while some women reported theft of gold ear and nose rings, and their axes and implements from shops.As people gathered at the gudi to continue speaking to The Wire’s reporter, one of the things that emerged was that this raid by the police was accompanied by a number of guised men in black who wore masks concealing three-fourth of their faces.Amidst the altercations, a few of these masked men revealed who they were.Jayaydhar Naik, Vanang Dei Majhi and Gobinda Majhi, residents of Kantamal and long-time grassroots activists of the Adivasi collective Maa Maati Maali Surakhya Mancha, asserted that a number of people from nearby villages of Sagabari, Lakrish, and Siadimal who worked as Vedanta’s dalaals, or touts, and were the alleged goons at night.Vedanta’s field officer with whom The Wire’s reporter has previously communicated refused to answer in detail and claimed that he is not aware of the specificities of the pre-dawn unrest in Kutamal, that he is only responsible for a different area in the district. An inquiry to the company’s CSR Department and press team was then sent as of April 25, and awaits a response.The Wire has also reached out to the Rayagada district magistrate and SP Rayagada for their comments on these developments, and this article will be updated when a response is received.The Kondh Adivasi and other mool-nivasi communities, now living under state-backed violence, have existed in the shadow of Tijmali for centuries. Every face of the hill is marked by tapana – sacred sites and spiritual groves that embody their ancestors. These deities sustain not only the villagers, but the trees, domesticated animals they rear, and all that moves through these vast forests and lands. All of them now face an existential threat, as this violence continues to shape everyday life across the villages of Kalahandi and Rayagada district in Odisha.Malika Singh is an independent field-reporter and remote MA student at SOAS University of London, currently based out of Jaipur. Randall Sequeira is a community physician working closely with Adivasi people’s movements in Odisha, currently based out of Bhawanipatna.