In Rajasthan’s battle against illegal sand mining, violence wins

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Editor's note: On a December evening in 2011, Kailash Meena was walking down a deserted street to attend a meeting in a village in Rajasthan’s Sikar district. As he looked at his phone to decline a call from an unknown number, one of the many he had received in the hour prior, he was waylaid by a group of men armed with iron rods. For the next few minutes, Meena was assaulted and verbally abused until the locals intervened.  “It felt like an earthquake and shook me to my core, but the locals knew me and helped,” he recalls. “I went to the police station to register an FIR against the accused. Despite many pleas, the cops rejected doing so. I went to court and had my FIR lodged, but no arrests were made, and the police submitted a final report stating that no case could be formed out of it.”   This wasn’t the first time Meena was attacked. The 57-year-old activist, who has been fighting against illegal mining in the state for more than two decades, has been attacked six times, …