Women of Lagacherla, the village in Telangana’s Vikarabad district, which witnessed large scale protests against land acquisition, go about their day-to-day chores at the crack of dawn: tending to the herd of goats, sending their teenage offspring off to schools. But in public squares and homes, the men are missing.
‘It has been this way for more than two months," said 42-year-old Sugunamma, when TNM met her in the first week of January. The men absconded fearing arrests following the protests against the Pharma Village project. The village, populated predominantly by the Lambada tribe, has witnessed the arrest of over sixty men since November 2024. “Around 40-50 others are on the run from the police,” said Kisti Bai, a 60-year-old resident.
Sugunamma said she hears from her husband, once every fortnight. “He gets hold of a passerby’s phone. He remembers my number so he calls and asks me not to worry. That’s my only assurance for now.”
Lagacherla’s residents have been on the edge since August 2024, when Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy announced that he would develop pharma clusters to promote Telangana as India’s life sciences hub. The village-based clusters were touted as a sustainable and decentralised alternative to the previous Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) government’s Pharma City Project which was planned in Mucherla, near Hyderabad.
According to the new government’s vision, each pharma village will cover 1,000 to 2,000 acres and will house between 20 to 30 companies. The entire project is estimated at Rs 1 lakh crore.
The clusters were to come up in villages of several districts including Vikarabad. Kodangal, under which Lagacherla falls, is a constituency from where Chief Minister Revanth Reddy has won thrice so far. “We danced and celebrated with a DJ stereo when Congress won the Assembly elections. We didn’t think we would be betrayed like this,” Kisti Bai adds.
Bowing to protests, the Congress government announced in November 2024 that they would withdraw the pharma project in Lagacherla. CM Reddy said that non-polluting industries would replace the Pharma Village project and assured that enhanced compensation for acquiring land would be discussed. “Why will I trouble the people of my own constituency?” the CM told a delegation of Left leaders after the project was scrapped.
And yet, the tense situation in Lagacherla offers evidence that trouble persists. Despite the CM’s assurances, the government has made no move to mend bridges with the residents of the village after the uprising. On the ground, the police continue to play hardball. Several men are still absconding or in prison and the women suffer economic and emotional hardships.
According to a complaint given by the farmers to a delegation of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), on November 11, 2024, hundreds of police personnel accompanied by local goons raided the village and assaulted the protestors. “They did not even spare pregnant women,” the complaint notes. The complaint alleges that the police harassed, tortured and falsely implicated the residents of Lagacherla under different charges for protesting against land acquisition.
‘Only usurping tribals’ land,’ remark residents
The NHRC report observes that the land traditionally belonged to persons from SC/ST and OBC communities. This was also an issue raised by Lagacherla’s women. Both Kisti Bai and Sugunamma are of the view that the attempt to take away their land has a caste dimension.
“The state government’s attempts at land grabbing was aided completely by few of the forward caste Kapus and the Congress’ Mandal president A Shekar, who belongs to the Balija community,” alleges Sugunamma. “They kept calling us, saying why don’t you come and talk about it? Why protest? The state will compensate you well,” she said. “Their lands are fine,” said Kisti Bai, a 60-year-old woman. “They only seem to want Lamadolla Bhoomi (land owned by Lambadas),” she said.
Women of Lagacherla await husbands’ return
“Its been a month since my husband got arrested,” said Manju Naik, a 27-year-old resident of Lagacherla. “IVik have put my kids in school in Hyderabad and live all by myself here. Living is difficult. I have to go for my regular labour work and tend to the goats we herd. The state cannot compensate us for this loss, can they?”
Most women TNM met had stories to share that raised questions about state excesses. Kisti Bai said repeated visits by police to Lagacherla scared her son, who finally absconded. “This is my grandson,” she remarks, pointing to an eight-year-old boy next to her. “Our entire harvest is lost because my son wasn’t available to work. It's difficult as we have to take care of the children and tend to our herds and the farm. We also don’t know what the health of our men is like. If they are safe or not, if they are eating or sleeping securely,” she said.
Apart from the police excesses, the forceful land grabbing and arrests have affected the livelihoods of Lagacherla’s women. “Since the men aren’t there, we end up doing double the work for half the income. Earlier, I could just go and work as a labourer or work on our land. Now farming has taken a hit because we don’t know how to drive tractors. So our farm lands are affected,” Sugunamma said. “Men took care of the finances. The increase in work load is one aspect. But without the men, the sense of safety also doesn’t exist,” she adds.
Sugunamma’s friend, Seetha said she earns just enough to feed herself and her children. “My husband is absconding. We used to earn up to Rs 20,000 earlier per month. Now I work whenever it’s possible but the money I earn is just enough to buy groceries,” she said.
Allegations of violence
Even before the November 11 protest when farmers were arrested, the protestors were charged with violence. When talks with Shekar, the most accessible Congress leader, failed, the protesting farmers locked him up in the gram panchayat office on October 25, 2024. This led to Vikarabad District Collector Prateek Jain visiting Lagacherla on November 11. While Jain issued a statement saying he wasn’t attacked by the residents of Lagacherla, TNM has accessed several FIRs based on which farmers were arrested for instigating violence.
Vikarabad Collector Prateek Jain also requested the media to not dub the incident an attack. “There were certain instigators, yes. But the farmers themselves called us to speak and we went. A clash broke out and things got heated up. They are all our farmers, our people and I request the media not to view this as an attack on me or use the word attack,” he said.
Despite this, three FIRs were filed against the protestors for stopping Jain’s vehicle and “attacking him, the additional collector Lingya Naik and Kondangal Area Development Authority (KADA) special officer Venkat Reddy.” The main charges here too are causing harm to a public servant, attempt to murder and the relevant sections of the Prevention of Damage to Public Property (PDPPA) Act, 1984.
TNM accessed four First Information Reports linked to Lagacherla protests. In the first, nine people were booked under various sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) dealing with wrongful confinement, assault, criminal force against a public servant and preventing them from performing their duties, as well as attempted murder.
Jakkula Lakshman, a lawyer closely associated with the opposition Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), who represented most of Lagcherla’s protestors told TNM that a major reason hindering the bail of the protestors was the charge of attempt-to-murder. “This is also the reason several men are absconding despite their names not being in the FIR,” Lakshman said. He considers the arrest of men under the false charge of attempt-to-murder as unfair and illegal.
How land acquisition is panning out
As per the District Collector’s public statement, the public hearing was called for by the residents of the village instead of the district administration. “We just knew that our lands are going to go because officials at the Telangana Grameena Bank told us. No hearing or meeting was held before that,” a male resident out on bail told TNM on the condition of anonymity.
The BRS has been highly critical of the Congress government’s recent attempts to acquire land for the Pharma Village project. Lost in the din is however the fact that the LARR 2013 Act was amended to make it toothless by BRS when it was in power.
Any large land acquisition process used to entail a public hearing as per the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act (LARR) of 2013.
The LARR Act imposes several checks and restrictions on how land must be acquired. For instance, it specifies that a gram sabha must be convened to discuss land acquisition as part of its social impact assessment.
However, provisions like the gram sabha meeting and social impact assessment were done away with by the previous KCR government when they brought in the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act 2016.
Interestingly enough, the Congress, in defense of several farmers, had slammed the BRS government for altering the land acquisition law and defrauding the farmers. It is using the same law now to acquire lands for the Pharma Village projects.
In November 2024, CM Revanth said that he had instructed officials to offer three times the market value of the land to farmers. “We will pay the highest compensation. No one will give his or her land willingly, but I promise to give Rs 30 lakh if the land value is Rs 10 lakh at present,” the CM said while addressing a public meeting as part of “Praja Vijayotsavalu” to mark one year of the Telangana Congress’ rule.
However, the LARR Act brought in by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) in 2013 makes it clear that “compensation for the owners of the acquired land shall be four times the market value in case of rural areas and twice in urban areas”. Lagacherla farmers also remark that they are unclear about what the compensation is but the CM’s statements do indicate a dilution of the compensation promised under the 2013 Act.
While the state has temporarily halted the Pharma villages project, Sugunamma said the situation hasn’t improved. “Even those who are out on bail have to report to the police station every week. We don’t want pharma or other industries, non-polluting or otherwise. For one, we want our men back. If the only way the state can provide jobs is by grabbing our lands, we don’t want that,” she said.