Soni Sori

Soni Sori (born c. 1975 ) is an Adivasi school teacher turned political leader of Aam Aadmi Party in Sameli village of Dantewada in south Bastar, Chhattisgarh, India.

In the 2010s, the Naxals forbade her relatives from cultivating their land.

Her father served as an informant against the Naxals.

On 14 August 2010, Naxals had appealed to boycott the Independence Day and around 60 Naxals torched six trucks in the Dantewada district and then fled the spot.

Along with others, charges were framed against Sori for rioting at Kuakonda police station.

In July 2010, warrants were first issued against Soni, along with her husband and nephew, for an attack on a local Indian National Congress leader, Avdesh Gautam.

In the attack, Gautam escaped harm, but his son was injured.

The Indian Express wrote that "evidence suggests both Sori and Futane were not involved in the attack", but that SRP Kalluri used the charges to pressure them to become informers.

Gautam stated that Soni Sori was not arrested as she had promised "a major haul of Maoists".

She was arrested by the Delhi Police's Crime Branch for Chhattisgarh Police in 2011 on charges of acting as a conduit for Maoists.

During her imprisonment, she was tortured and sexually assaulted by Chhattisgarh state police.

On 14 June 2011, the Naxals looted the family's house and shot her father in the leg.

He was given Rs.

80,000 as compensation.

On 9 September 2011, Chhattisgarh Police stated that they had prevented an exchange of extortion money from the Essar Group to the Maoist group CPI (Maoist).

Earlier, leaked diplomatic cables had also said that the Essar Group pays a significant amount of protection money to Maoists to safeguard its operations in the state.

The cable stated that a senior representative from Essar, a major industrial company with large mining and steel-related facilities in Chhattisgarh, told a representative of the Congenoff (Consul General Office) that the company pays the Maoists "a significant amount" not to harm or interfere with their operations.

The police stated the steel company was paying the Maoists to buy peace and safeguard its iron ore slurry pipeline from Dantewada.

According to the police, along with her nephew Lingaram Kodopi, Sori was slated to collect ₹ 1.5 million from Essar contractor B K Lala at Palnar weekly market in Dantewada on 9 September.

The police stated they arrested Lala and Kodopi from the bazaar, but due to chaos in the market, Sori gave them the slip.

On 10 September 2011, Ankit Garg, SP, Dantewada announced the arrests of Essar contractor B K Lala and Maoist conduit Lingaram

Kodapi (Sori's nephew).

The police, Garg said, arrested them on 9 September when Lala was handing over ₹ 1.5 million to Kodapi at Palnar market, while Sori and Maoist commanders Vinod and Bhadru "escaped" from the spot.

Essar GM DVCS Verma was also arrested.

Soni Sori escaped and fled to Delhi.

On 3 October 2011, Chhattisgarh Police raided house of Kavita Srivastava, general secretary of People's Union for Civil Liberties, Rajasthan division in search of Sori but failed.

It was also alleged that Sori was trying to collect the levy under the pretext of being a Maoist.

Sori's mother, a housewife, died in 2012.

Soni Sori attended a nursing college, but dropped out to work as a warden of a girls' residential school in the Jabeli village.

She married Anil Futane; the couple lived in Sameli village with their three children before their arrests.

By April 2013, the Indian Courts had acquitted her in six of the eight cases filed against her due to lack of evidence.

After release from prison, Sori began campaigning for the rights of those caught up in the conflict between Maoist insurgents and the government, in particular criticising police violence against tribespeople in the region.

On 29 May 2013, she was granted bail by a judicial magistrate.

Sori is a member of Aam Aadmi Party on whose ticket she unsuccessfully contested the 2014 general elections from Bastar, but lost to Dinesh Kashyap of the BJP.

In 2018, Sori won the 2018 Front Line Defenders award.

Soni Sori was born to Munda Ram, a former Indian National Congress leader who served as the sarpanch (elected village headman) of Bade Bedma village for over a decade.

Her brother Sukhdev and his wife were also elected to the panchayat (village council) as Congress representatives.

Two of her uncles were also Congress leaders, who served as MLAs.

Her cousin Amrita Sori is Deputy Superintendent of Police in Jagdalpur, the headquarters of Bastar district.

Sori's family owns large tracts of lands in Dantewada district.