This short footage was taken yesterday as Niyamgiri dwellers celebrated the Supreme Court’s verdict, while also cautioning that the company and state officials must stay away from the process. In his interview Kutia Kond activist Kumuti Majhi states:

“When the Orissa chief minister came to lay foundation [of Vedanta’s project], if we were five of us, they were a hundred. The [company] staff and men had stopped local people on the way and threatened them away; they get up to such conspiracies!

The government now thought of giving us also a chance to voice about our rights; we hope that this will help us. But, if they continue to employ police and goons against us, this [verdict] appears to be going in their [Vedanta’s] favour only.”