1528

Title: 1528

Photographer(s): Rohit Saha

Writer(s): Rohit Saha, Sanjoy Hazarika

Designer(s): Rohit Saha

Publisher(s): Alkazi Foundation for the Arts, New Delhi, India

Year: 2019

Print run: 300

Language(s): English

Pages: 200

Size: 24 x 34 cm

Binding: Softcover, bound with elastic

Edition:

Print: Naveen Printers,New Delhi, India

Nation(s) and year(s) of Protest: India,2016 - 2018

ISBN: 978-1-5136-5591-8

In August 2016, after a 16-year hunger strike protesting the removal of the Armed Forces Special Power Act (AFSPA), civil rights activist and poet, Irom Sharmila broke her fast. She began in the year 2000, in response to the unjustified killing of ten people at a bus stand by the armed forces in a village called Malom. This episode came to be known as Malom Massacre.

The Act, as it has been enforced in Manipur – often described as a ‘disturbed state’ – allows the military to execute anyone on the mere suspicion of terrorism. It has recently been claimed that there are well over 1528 people who have died in such Extra-Judicial killings carried out by the Armed Forces between 1979 and 2012.

With this project, my aim was to understand the nature and scale of these fictitious clashes that are called ‘fake encounters’, keeping the landscape as witness. By volunteering for the EEVFAM (Extra-Judicial Execution Victim Families of Manipur) – an organisation formed by the widows of victims – I gained insight and gathered evidence about the situation at hand. By going through victims’ testimonies as well as witness accounts, I was able to shape my current perspective – a photobook of my personal experiences.