India Ink: Sid Harth
A Massacre Prompts New Debate Over India's War With Maoist Rebels
By Sumon K. Chakrabarti / Dantewada Sunday, Apr. 11, 2010
A paramilitary soldier injured by Maoist rebels is hoisted into an
ambulance in Jagdalpur, India.
TV9 / AP
The undulating hills and thick vegetation of Dandakaranya forest —
nearly 50,000 square kilometers of jungle straddling parts of central
Indian states of Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and the southern state of
Andhra Pradesh — has for decades been a forsaken, off-the-map region
frequented only by corporate India looking to make a killing from the
iron ore reserves of the land. Indeed, for close to 10 years now, the
area has remained off limits for the Indian government and its
agencies, including the police and the military. It is one of the few
pockets of India that has not been topographically surveyed. No good
maps exist of the region. The only "government" the tribal people of
these forests are acquainted with is provided by a fearsome band of
insurgents: "Janatana Sarkar," the people's government run by the
guerrillas of the Communist Party of India-Maoists (CPI-Maoists), for
whom most of the forest is a de facto military headquarters.
(See how India is stepping up its fight against the Maoists.)
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1940559,00.html
But just weeks ago, New Delhi decided to challenge the rebels who
carry Mao Zedong's name and who are waging the bloodiest insurgency
India has ever seen. The government announced that 50,000 paramilitary
troops would be part of Operation Greenhunt, with tough-talking Home
Minister of India, Palaniappan Chidambaram, promising to "wipe off the
Maoist movement in the next two-three years." As part of this
campaign, police and para-military forces last week engaged in a four-
day "area domination" exercise near the village of Datewada in the
Dandakaranya forest. But the Maoists were not about to let this
incursion into their territory pass with impunity.
The 80 members of the government's Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF)
were taking a break on April 6 at around 6 a.m. after traveling all
night, when they were ambushed by what some officials estimate to be
400 Maoists positioned on a neighboring hilltop. The Maoists executed
their attack with fierce precision, giving the soldiers no chance to
react. They blew up an anti-landmine vehicle and then began firing
indiscriminately. The shocked and exhausted soldiers, who had not been
able to follow standard procedures like checking the road for
landmines ahead of time, were massacred within minutes. The guerrillas
— both men and women — then took away AK-47 and Insas rifles, the
mortars, magazines of ammunition and bullet-proof jackets from their
victims. Of the 80 Indian troops on exercise, 76 were killed.
While admitting that it lost eight fighters in the three-hour long
attack, the Maoist spokesman justified the massacre in a three-page
faxed statement, saying: "The CRPF battalion deployed in [in
Chattisgarh] were killing innocent people, burning villages, raping
women and displacing... people. We also wanted to take revenge of
killing of our top leaders..."
(See how India's schools have been caught in the cross-fire in the
fight against the Maoists.)
It has been the most significant government setback in the undeclared
war between the two Indias. The Maoists thrive in the 'other' India —
the India which is impoverished, left behind as one-fifth of the
country's populace has begun to thrive, while the other 800 million
suffer with growing resentment from chronic poverty, live without
electricity, roads, hospitals, proper sanitation or clean water — the
classic breeding ground for left-wing extremist violence. As Mao
himself prescribed in 1927, "It's necessary to bring about a brief
reign of terror in every rural area... To right a wrong it is
necessary to exceed the proper limit." Naxalism, as Indian Maoism is
also called — after a village named Naxalbari at the movement's
origins — has rapidly outstripped the insurgencies in Jammu & Kashmir
and North-East India. Maoists have a presence in at least 16 of
India's 28 states, and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has described
Naxalism as the "biggest internal security challenge" that faces the
country.
India today is groping for answers on how to respond to the Maoist
attack. Chidambaram's strategy had appeared to be working. Many top
Maoist leaders, including Politburo members, had been arrested; the
Maoists had indeed offered to negotiate. Their chief military officer,
Kishanji — nom de guerre of Mallojula Koteswara Rao — even gave out
his cellphone number to Chidambaram to facilitate talks. "But actually
they were retreating so that they can regroup. This is how the Maoists
always operate. But still we have not learnt anything," says K. P. S.
Gill, formerly one of India's top police officers, who had advised the
Chattisgarh government in a previous anti-Maoist operation.
Privately, many senior leaders in the ruling Congress party had
complained to their party president Sonia Gandhi that Home Minister
Chidambaram had used unnecessarily provocative language when talking
about the Maoists. But Prime Minister Singh refused to accept
Chidambaram's offer to resign after the massacre. With the central
government still debating how to deal with the Maoists, there is
confusion on the ground about how to tackle the insurgency. K.P.S.
Gill says it's now time to rethink the entire strategy and criticizes
Chidambaram for giving the go ahead to a "flawed operation."
(See pictures of India's turning points.)
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1649065,00.html
Those in India who perceive Chidambaram to be a "warmonger" argue that
growing social disparities thrown up by India's economic growth have
been a major factor behind the rebels' expansion. They say the
government needs to provide a more equitable distribution of its
growing wealth. "Let's not forget the killing of more than a hundred
tribal villagers by the security forces since June 2009 ... It's time
the nation starts to work towards ceasefire and cessation of
hostilities so as to help initiate dialogue with the Maoists, and to
address the real issues affecting the people like forced corporate or
state acquisition of land, displacement, tribal rights and the lack of
governance," says Dr. Ranabir Samaddar, Director of Calcutta Research
Group.
Meanwhile, India's Armed Forces are not anxious to join the fight. The
new Indian army chief General V. K. Singh has blamed the lack of
training and tactics in jungle warfare as well as command and control
for the loss of the 76 troopers. He ruled out any role of the military
— that is, the security forces of India's federal government — in the
ongoing operation. "The Naxalite problem is a law and order problem,
which is a state subject. It stems from certain issues on the ground,
be it of governance, be it of administration, be it of socio-economic
factors. And since it is not a secessionist movement, I think our
polity is astute and wise enough to know the implications of using the
Army against their own people." The chief of the Indian Air Force, Air
Marshal P V Naik also expressed his unwillingness to use the Air Force
and its unmanned drones in ongoing anti-Maoist operations. "Unless we
are 120% sure that the Naxals are the country's enemies, it will not
be fair to use the Air Force within our borders."
The Director General of Police of Chattisgarh Vishwa Ranjan admits
that "the [paramilitary] forces need to be trained specifically for
this, which unfortunately we don't do. It's time all of us sit up and
act," he says. Still, he insists he is "prepared to take casualties."
He told TIME: "We are in a war. And no war is won without people
dying."
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1981122,00.html?xid=rss-world
India Steps Up Its Fight Against Naxalites
By Jessica Bachman / Kanker Friday, Nov. 20, 2009
Indian officers patrol a forest around their base on the edge of rebel-
controlled territory in Chhattisgarh in October 2009
Keith Bedford / The New York Times / Redux
Late-night digging along the back roads of Bastar, a dense jungle
region in India's northern state of Chhattisgarh, can only mean one
thing if there's nothing to show for it the next day: Maoist rebel
activity. So when a group of villagers in the state's Kanker district,
the gateway to Bastar, were kept awake for nights on end last month by
repeated chinking from metal striking rock on a nearby road, they knew
something was up.
They were right. The Maoists, commonly known in India as Naxalites,
had dug a tunnel five feet under the surface of a paved back road that
was used by security forces from the nearby Counter-Terrorism and
Jungle Warfare College. The insurgents' tunnel's exit points, on the
side of the road, were well concealed with alternating layers of
sandbags and dirt. But before the Naxalites got around to booby-
trapping the underground tunnel with improvised explosives cobbled
together from scavenged pieces of iron and heisted explosive materials
from state-owned mines, it had been filled in. The villagers had
tipped off commandos from the college.
Naxalite rebels, whose leaders claim to follow Maoist doctrine on
armed people's struggle, have been waging a guerilla war against the
Indian government since their first uprising in the West Bengal
village of Naxalbari in 1967. For over three decades a phlegmatic
response from central and state security organs did little to prevent
the then isolated Naxal insurgency from foraying into underdeveloped
forest and jungle regions in central and eastern India where it gained
support of impoverished tribal groups and villagers. By 2001, some
Naxalites had gained sway over 51 districts, and with the state
response mechanism to their movements still weak, that number
quadrupled in less than a decade. Naxals now operate in 223 districts,
spread out over one-third of India along a vertical belt commonly
referred to as the Red Corridor.
In the 34 regions that the government considers to be the worst
affected by Maoist activity, the rebel movement has taken on a
particularly bloody dimension, with Naxalites orchestrating police
massacres, bombings, bank and mine robberies, informant murders and
kidnappings on a routine basis. By Nov. 2, "left-wing extremism" —
Delhi's euphemism for Naxal terrorism — was responsible for 834
civilian, security-force and Naxal deaths throughout 10 states this
year, according to data collected by the South Asia Terrorism Portal.
As in previous years, Chhattisgarh took the biggest hit, sustaining
237 casualties. While last month's brazen attempt in the state to
attack India's only anti-Naxal police training camp reveals how low
the insurgents' perception is of the state's ability to fight them, it
also, says the college's director, gives the institution further
insight into how to fight this battle. "I've always told our men that
they can't win the war against the Naxals without gaining the trust of
the villagers and forest dwellers," says Brigadier Basant Ponwar, who
served in the army for 35 years as a counterinsurgency specialist
before going to Chhattisgarh in 2005 to set up the college. "Now we
see that even right in our own backyard the villagers are our eyes and
ears."
Tucked away on 300 acres of hilly jungle terrain, just north of a
notorious Naxal stronghold, the college is strategically positioned to
drill police forces in a strategy that until recently was reserved for
training select army special forces: fight a guerilla like a guerilla.
"Police are trained for carrying out normal law-and-order duties.
They're not prepared for jungle combat or jungle living, but that's
precisely what they must know to take on Naxals," explains the state's
director general of police, Vishwa Ranjan. For decades the state had
dismissed the Naxal movement's creeping ascendancy over its southern
districts and did little to buttress the strength of its security
force. This year, the state's sanctioned police force stands at
46,000, more than double the number of officers on the ground in 2005,
and all new recruits are being put through the college course in
addition to basic training.
The college has already taught 11,500 police personnel from eight
states how to raid Naxal hideouts, conduct search-and-destroy
operations at gun-manufacturing camps, clear roads of improvised
explosives using sniffer dogs, set up roadside checkpoints and set up
covert outposts in enemy territory. During the 45-day course,
commandos-in-training get up at dawn for early morning conditioning,
including three-mile runs up steep, rocky knobs plus strength
training, yoga and meditation. (Ponwar insists that all officers who
still have a paunch by the end of the course are failed.) To dispel
officers' fear of the jungle, the forces are taught how to catch (and
eat) snakes, distinguish edible plants from poisonous ones and make
camouflaged lean-tos out of sticks and leaves.
The college has been a bright spot in India's fight against the bloody
insurgency. But Ajai Sahni, the executive director of the New Delhi–
based Institute of Conflict Management, says that the high level of
corruption and inefficiency in the state security apparatus cancels
out whatever inroads the school has made. "Only a fraction of those
that go through the college's training are later used for what they
are being trained for, so the effort is often for naught," Sahni
laments, comparing the police commandos to students trained in
neurosurgery who go on to become store clerks. Only half of the
college's graduates from Chhattisgarh are deployed in areas with
substantial Maoist activity and, according to Sahni, police corruption
and grasping politicians are to blame. "It's a well-known fact that if
a police officer doesn't want to be deployed to dangerous district, he
bribes his way out," he says. "Many of the warfare college's commandos
are also scooped up by VIP ministers and politicians who want to be
surrounded by impressive security details."
Meanwhile, national efforts to bring this decades-long insurgency to a
swift end are also intensifying. India's new hard-line Home Minister,
P. Chidambaram, is not convinced that states, if left to their own
devices, will be able to reassert state authority over Naxal-dominated
territories anytime soon. That's why this month, tens of thousands of
paramilitary and border security forces were withdrawn from other
regions and deployed in rebel districts in northern and central India.
"Our newest strategy is to win complete control over small areas under
Maoist influence, hold them, and not withdraw forces until development
in the area is well under way," says director general of police Vishwa
Ranjan. "We will repeat this pattern in other areas, a few at a time,
until the enemy has nowhere to go. "
Still, considering it's taken four decades to get to this point, the
process is bound to be a gradual one. In recent years, the state's
action plan was to establish a minimum police presence in all Naxal
regions, and little attention was paid to increasing the size of the
ranks or improving the meager force's fighting abilities. But without
strength in numbers or combat skills, the police have been unable to
curb the spread of Maoist violence and defend the state's isolated
police outposts. At the Indian Economic Summit in New Delhi on Nov.
10, Chidambaram said all heavily affected states would completely
reassert control over their Naxal-dominated areas within two or three
years. Director general of police Ranjan thinks four years is a more
realistic time frame. "We're not taking any more shortcuts," Ranjan
says. "This is going to be a long, drawn-out battle."
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1940559,00.html
India's Secret War
By Simon Robinson/Southern Chhattisgarh Thursday, May. 29, 2008
ENLARGE PHOTO+
Armed and Dangerous
Maoist Naxalite rebels go through training exercises in the woods of
Chhattisgarh, a central Indian state at the heart of the insurgency
Photograph for TIME by Adam Ferguson
The news came crackling over the radio, the voice fading in and out as
the sound waves bounced through the wooded hills and valleys of
central India to the camp where the militants — and a TIME
photographer and myself — lay down to sleep. Earlier that day in May,
a raiding gang of some 300 Maoist insurgents had attacked a plant
belonging to Indian steel giant Essar, the radio news program
declared. More than 50 trucks and pieces of heavy machinery had been
destroyed. The commander of the unit in the camp that night, Deva, a
boyish-looking man of just 24 or 25 (he wasn't quite sure), allowed a
smile to spread across his face for a moment. His comrades-in-arms
against the government of India and the companies that drive its
booming economy had struck again. That, he said, should answer my
question about whether the Maoist insurgents went easy on some mining
companies in the area so as to force them to pay protection money and
bribes instead. "If the public wants to teach a lesson to Essar, then
we'll teach them a lesson," said Deva.
You've heard of rich India and poor India, a land of high-tech workers
and slum dwellers alike. This is a story about a third India that
exists at the nexus of the two, which feeds off the excesses of the
country's new wealth and preys on its most vulnerable. It is the story
of the Naxalites, a Maoist insurgency that has grown from the margins
four decades ago to become, in the words of Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh, "the single biggest internal security challenge ever faced by
our country." It is a tale of ideology and mafia-like thuggery, a
conflict born in a vacuum of government inaction, and fueled by
official mismanagement and corruption. And it is the story of the
millions caught in between.
A Turn to the Left India is no stranger to violent rebellion, as the
decades-long struggle in Kashmir attests. But the separatist conflict
there and low-level insurgencies in the country's remote northeast
grind on at the periphery, driven by groups agitating to break away.
The Maoists, like their ideological brothers in Nepal who recently
took power through elections, are different. They want to overthrow
the government in New Delhi and install a new one, and they have taken
their fight to the geographic heart of the country, to the scrubby
woodland and remote, poor villages that blanket a huge chunk of
central India. The would-be revolutionaries trace their roots back to
1967, when a group of activists split away from India's mainstream
Communist Party and initiated a peasant uprising in the West Bengal
village of Naxalbari. The Naxalite movement grew quickly and attracted
landless laborers and student intellectuals, but a government
crackdown in the 1970s broke the group into myriad feuding factions.
By the 1990s, as India began to liberalize its economy and economic
growth took off, violent revolution seemed more quaint relic than
threat.
No longer. The Naxalite resurgence began in 2004 when the two biggest
splinters of the original movement — one Marxist and one Maoist — set
aside their differences and joined to form the Communist Party of
India (Maoist). The combined force — which Indian government security
officials and independent analysts now estimate at between 10,000 and
20,000 armed fighters plus at least 50,000 active supporters — has
quickly consolidated power across great swathes of India's poorest
regions. The central government, which lists the Naxalites as a banned
terrorist group, says that 11 of India's 28 states are now affected in
one way or another by the insurgency. Nongovernment organizations put
the number of affected states even higher. The rebels tax local
villagers, extort payments from businesses, abduct and kill "class
enemies" such as government officials and police officers, and stop
aid getting through to people caught in the cross fire.
The militia's strikes have grown more daring. In March last year, some
400 Naxalites surrounded a police camp in southern Chhattisgarh, lit
the camp up using powerful lights and generators and lobbed grenades
and petrol bombs for more than three hours, killing 55 people. Last
December, in the same area, a single Maoist overpowered a jail guard
and set free 294 inmates, including 15 senior Naxalite fighters. In
February this year, more than 100 insurgents laid siege to three
police stations, a police outpost, a police training school and a
government armory in the state of Orissa, killing 13 policemen and a
bystander and hauling off hundreds of rifles, semiautomatics, light
machine guns, pistols and ammunition. Not a single Maoist was killed.
Include government security forces, civilians and the Naxalites
themselves, and the conflict killed 837 people in 2007, enough to make
it deadlier than the Kashmir conflict for the first time ever. "It's
absolutely a growing threat," says Ajai Sahni, executive director of
the Institute for Conflict Management in New Delhi and a keen observer
of the re-emergence of the Naxalites. "You can't escape that fact."
Ripe for Revolution A recent — and extremely rare — trip into a
Naxalite zone in the state of Chhattisgarh shows just how much control
the Maoists have in India's neglected heartland. After weeks of
negotiating, I received word from a senior commander there that cadres
from the area would escort a photographer and me into the field to
meet a rebel unit. After an early morning, two-hour motorbike ride
along dirt roads south of the town of Dantewada, across rivers where
women beat their clothes against rocks and through villages full of
thatched and terracotta-roofed huts, scrawny chickens and children
with distended bellies (a classic sign of malnutrition), we set off by
foot deep into the forested hills.
The people there don't just live on the edge of Indian society — they
live beyond it, in a void that successive governments in New Delhi
have neglected for decades. In this part of the country, far removed
from the famed call centers of modern India, there are no roads, no
power, no running water, no telephones and no officials to answer
pleas for help.
The inhabitants of these villages are known as Adivasis, or "original
dwellers." Most Indians call them tribals, a category that doesn't
even register in India's complicated caste pecking order but stands
outside it. The British colonial rulers treated Adivasis as
encroachers on the very land they had occupied for generations, a
legal absurdity that India's current government has only recently
corrected. Adivasis are entitled to reserved places in universities
and government jobs but they remain among India's poorest and most
marginalized. In village after village on our journey, the only
visible sign of a government presence was an occasional well with
metal hand pump.
Born in the hills he now fights from, Deva — he gave just one name —
is an Adavasi like most of the insurgency's foot soldiers. Naxalite
commanders have historically come from the movement's educated ranks
and often speak English. Deva speaks only Gondi, a local tongue. If he
has a second language it is the strange, religious-like discipline of
Maoism. Our conversations were punctuated with long silences as he
turned questions over in his head before answering them, often with a
slogan or a long monologue that sounded torn from the small collection
of books and newspapers that his unit read and reread and then teach
to local villagers. He began learning Maoism at eight, he said. Two of
his five siblings are also Maoist fighters. They had a good childhood,
helping their father farm rice and hunt in the forests. There was no
school in his village and so he and his siblings attended classes
given by rebel soldiers who had moved into the area. What they taught
made perfect sense to him. "For thousands of years we have been here
but we don't have rights and the government does nothing for us: no
health, no education, no services. They don't come here," Deva said.
"At the same time they don't respect us. They say they can give out
rights to this land to mining companies and they have the power to do
that. We say, No."
There's no denying the insurgency has prospered in areas of official
neglect. In a paper he presented to Parliament two years ago, Home
Minister Shivraj Patil said that "Naxalites operate in [a] vacuum
created by [an] absence of administrative and political institutions."
The Naxalites, Patil said, "take advantage of the disenchantment
prevalent among the exploited segments of the population" to "offer an
alternative system of governance which promises emancipation ...
through the barrel of a gun."
Domestic Violence That textbook description of how an insurgency works
was on show in the village we visited — a small collection of huts
Deva and his unit of 130 men and women use as an occasional base as
they constantly shift around the hills. There, as elsewhere, the
Naxalites run a parallel administration, complete with tax collectors,
a school and very basic health facilities. Late in the afternoon,
seven women militants dressed in tunics and red sashes danced and sang
for gathered villagers, preaching the benefits of Maoism, railing
against exploitative mining companies and chanting about the evils of
New Delhi. Dozens of young kids listened intently. In a mock training
drill put on for the visiting reporters, the same kids watched
uniformed insurgents practice creeping through thick jungle and assume
various attack positions. "Our prime mission is to awake the public
and then revolution will happen automatically," a squad commander
named Bhima told me.
But Maoism's methods are no gentle wake-up call. India's Naxalites
have taken to heart Mao Zedong's maxim that "the seizure of power by
armed force, the settlement of the issue by war, is the central task
and the highest form of revolution," killing and abducting enemies and
using coercion and force to win support among the very same villagers
they claim to be liberating. To protest state "exploitation," the
Maoists regularly order farmers in their regions to stop growing food
or to raise the sale prices for certain items. Farmers who defy such
bans have been summarily executed, say human-rights groups such as the
Chhattisgarh-based Forum for Fact-Finding Documentation and Advocacy.
Naxalites also regularly terrorize village folk and warn them not to
move to government-controlled areas. On our trip into the hinterland
it was impossible to ask villagers whether they were happy with the
Maoist presence or not. But a few days earlier, in a camp for people
displaced by the conflict about 20 miles away, Miriyam Joga, 41, could
barely contain his rage. A relatively successful farmer, Joga had
owned a few dozen goats and 27 oxen in the southern Chhattisgarh
village of Punpalli until a Naxalite raid three years ago. "They said
if I leave my village then they will cut me like this," he said,
tilting his head back and drawing his finger across his throat. "But I
was feeling that they might murder me anyway so I left. They took my
animals and now I have nothing."
The Battle to Fight Back To boost the numbers and quality of new
recruits and to rearm and retrain existing police officers, New Delhi
has massively increased funding over the past few years. But much of
this money — 45% last year — goes unspent and coordination between
state police and the better-equipped and better-trained paramilitary
units sent by the central government to help in the worst-hit areas is
weak. "Often, our forces are not even called out [by the state
police]," complains A. P. Maheshwari, inspector general of operations
for the Central Reserve Police Force in New Delhi. (India's Home
Minister agreed to be interviewed for this story but repeatedly
canceled appointments with TIME.)
The central government has begun training state police in jungle
warfare at a new college in Chhattisgarh. More than 6,500 police
officers have learned better shooting skills, how to move in thick
forest, how to survive on bush food and how to take on enemy fighters
in hand-to-hand combat. But the flamboyant head of the college,
Brigadier B.K. Ponwar says that no matter how much police officers
improve their skills, the key remains winning the support of the
masses. "Look at Iraq," he says. "I tell my students that their most
important objective is to win people's hearts."
That would be easier if not for the emergence in Chhattisgarh three
years ago of a civil militia known as Salwa Judum, which means either
"peace mission" or "collective hunt" depending on who's doing the
translating. The movement's backers say it developed spontaneously
when local villagers grew tired of the Naxalites' brutal mafia-like
tactics. Chhattisgarh police then appointed thousands of young men,
some of them still teenagers, as "special police officers," supplied
them with weapons and pushed them to fight the Maoists. Human-rights
groups say the special police officers use many of the same tactics as
the Naxalites, including extrajudicial killings. The Salwa Judum
movement has also forced at least 60,000 people out of their villages
(to prevent the Naxalites from recruiting them) and into temporary
camps: sad, cramped settlements that are quickly taking on the air of
permanence.
The Salwa Judum movement has worsened the situation, draining the
countryside of potential informants and convincing thousands of people
that the Indian state really is as bad as the Naxalites say it is. A
central government committee has recommended closing the camps and
disarming the special police officers, whom India's Supreme Court
recently termed illegal. Salwa Judum supporters say the criticism is
proof of how widespread sympathy for the Naxalites is. "Should we stop
fighting terrorism?" asks Chhattisgarh opposition leader Mahendra
Karma, a member of the Congress Party and a strong backer of the
militia. "Even [Mahatma] Gandhi had his dissenters, and Salwa Judum,
which is a peaceful movement, is facing attacks by those motivated by
political ideology."
Government security officials and independent observers say the
Naxalites have begun to reorganize along more formal military lines.
The rebels still use bows and arrows, knives and ancient rifles, but
have begun to stock up on machine guns, land mines and mortars, and
are building increasingly sophisticated roadside bombs. Based on
documents seized in the past year, Indian intelligence agencies
estimate that Naxalite Inc. now has an annual budget of $250 million,
much of which comes from extorting road contractors and mining
companies, and from taxing hundreds of thousands of poor villagers.
That money, analysts say, is funding the Maoists' efforts to improve
their reach into — and ability to strike — urban areas.
Class war is still an unlikely dream, however. Yes, Maoist rebels
recently won power in neighboring Nepal. But the Indian state is more
powerful and sophisticated than Nepal's defeated monarchy. (The rise
of Nepal's Maoists has actually split opinion among their Indian
brothers: some believe that the Nepalese group sold out by
participating in elections, while others argue it is a legitimate
tactical move toward revolution.) And in India's rowdy democracy, the
entire political spectrum from far right to the mainstream Communist
Party of India have called for the Maoists to be destroyed.
Until that happens, the Maoists will continue to bleed India. "We want
every person in India to have equal rights and the Maoist flag flying
in New Delhi," Deva told me in his camp, a small group of cadres
gathered around him, nodding as he spoke. How long will that take? I
asked. A few of his men giggled. "We cannot say," Deva replied. "But
in our life we will do whatever is possible." It is a sentiment that
captures both the enormity of the Maoists' aims and the huge challenge
New Delhi faces in the years ahead.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1810169,00.html
Fearing CRPF backlash, villagers abandon homes for forests
Aman Sethi
Security forces killed my brother, says villager
— Photo: Aman Sethi
GHOST VILLAGE:Mukram village in Dantewada, Chhattisgarh, wears a
deserted look on Sunday. Its residents, fearing police retribution for
the massacre of 76 CRPF men by Maoists on April 6, have fled to the
forests.
Mukram: All the houses in this village in Dantewada, Chhattisgarh, are
locked. Cows, chickens and the odd pig roam the empty pathways in
search of water and shade. Since the April 6 massacre of 76 CRPF
personnel by Maoists in an open field about two kilometres away, the
villagers have moved into the forests. They return only for a few
hours a day to tend to their animals and the Mahua trees.
“Everyone is terrified that the police will take revenge by attacking
the village,” said a villager who came out of the forest to check on
his house, “They have already killed one person.”
A small village of about 50 houses, Mukram is of great significance in
the context of the April 6 Maoist attack. CRPF soldiers and villagers
confirmed that the patrol party of 82 men ate dinner here on the night
of April 5, a few hours before it was attacked.
CRPF soldiers interviewed by The Hindu are convinced that the
villagers tipped the Maoists off about the location of the force. “If
they hadn't stopped at that village, this would never have happened,”
said a soldier who was part of a reinforcement party sent from
Chintalnar.
A Maoist statement soon after the attack praised Rukhmati, a Maoist
section commander from Mukram, who was killed in the attack. However,
villagers insisted they had nothing to do with Tuesday's ambush. “We
knew nothing of the attack or of Rukhmati,” said a villager.
“A large group of policemen from Chintalnar camp came to our village
the day after the incident,” said Kunjam Mangadu. “We all ran into the
forests. But when we returned, we couldn't find my elder brother,
Kunjam Suklu.”
Villagers said their search for him ended the second day with the
discovery of his corpse in a field just adjacent to the massacre spot.
They cremated his body on Saturday.
The Chhattisgarh police and CRPF denied these allegations. “No such
incident has occurred,” said a senior CRPF officer based in Bastar.
“It is possible the villagers are pointing to the body of a Maoist
killed in Tuesday's encounter.”
However, villagers said Suklu's body bore no bullet marks. Kunjam
Mangadu said his brother was beaten to death. “He had been beaten so
badly that the skin was peeling off his arms.”
“We have received no information regarding the incident,” said Amresh
Mishra, Superintendent of Police, Dantewada. “No one has approached us
with any complaints.”
According to villagers and soldiers interviewed in Mukram and
Chintalnar, adivasi villages in a 10-kilometre radius of the
Chintalnar CRPF camp too have been abandoned.
On Saturday, Chintalnar village bore a deserted look as well.
“Chintalnar has the biggest bazaar in the area,” said a resident.
“Usually thousands of adivasis from more than 10 villages come for the
bazaar. Today is market day but no adivasi has come. Not one.”
http://www.thehindu.com/2010/04/12/stories/2010041260870100.htm
Probe into massacre begins
RAIPUR/JAGDALPUR: A one-man commission of inquiry to probe the April 6
massacre of 76 CRPF personnel in Chhattisgarh by Maoists has begun its
investigation, even as a manhunt is on to nab those who planned the
ambush.
E.N. Rammohan, former BSF chief, has started collecting information
such as the command structure and hierarchy, the decision on the
operation and the quality of training given to the CRPF men. He would
also probe whether they followed the Standard Operating Procedures,
informed sources said adding the Commission would submit a report on
April 24.
The CRPF on Sunday deployed commandos of the Special Armed Force in
the Naxal-infested forests of Dantewada. — PTI
http://www.thehindu.com/2010/04/12/stories/2010041261090100.htm
Maoist death squads executed dozens around Lalgarh
Praveen Swami
Killing campaign focused on eliminating CPI(M) activists and other
political opponents
JHARGRAM: Little pieces of glass still lie embedded in dry earth next
to the cot where Abhijit Mahato fell.
On the morning he was executed as an enemy of the people, Mahato had
been drinking a cup of tea at the end of an eight-hour night shift
guarding trucks parked along the Kharagpur-Ranchi highway — the job
that paid for the college classes he would have made his way to an
hour later.
But then, six men arrived on motorcycles at the truck-stop, carrying
automatic rifles. They announced to bystanders that Abhijit Mahato and
his friends, Anil Mahato and Niladhar Mahato, were members of the
Communist Party of India (Marxist). The punishment for this crime, the
men announced, was death.
The June 17 murder of Abhijit Mahato and his friends didn’t make it to
the national press — or draw the attention of the growing numbers of
human rights activists, who have arrived in West Medinipur district to
investigate the ongoing confrontation between the West Bengal
government and Communist Party of India (Maoist) operatives in
Lalgarh. But the killings — and dozens like it — are key to
understanding the still-unfolding crisis.
District police records show that 111 West Medinipur residents have
been killed by Maoist death squads since 2002. Most of the killings
were concentrated in the twin blocks of Binpur and adjoining Salboni —
the heartland of the Lalgarh violence.
Seventy four of the dead were targeted because they were cadre or
supporters of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Twenty-three of
the victims were police personnel; five were adivasis community
elders; one belonged to the Congress; another was a former Maoist who
had left the movement in disgust. Seventeen CPI(M) workers have been
executed by Maoists since November alone.
It is instructive to compare the murders in West Medinipur with those
in India’s most violent State — Jammu and Kashmir. In the years from
2003, Jammu and Kashmir Police records show, 71 political activists
from all political parties have been killed by jihadists. More lives
have been lost in attacks by Maoist death squads by one single party
in one single district of West Bengal.
The data also shows the contest has been uneven: not one Maoist
operative has been shot dead in West Medinipur until police moved into
Lalgarh last week, either by the state or their political opponents.
Most of those killed by the Maoist death squads come from the ranks of
the rural poor; many of them from the same adivasi communities whose
name the Maoists have invoked to legitimise terrorism in Lalgarh.
The only son of his widowed mother, and one of five children, Abhijit
Mahato was the first member of his extended family to succeed in
gaining admission to a college degree. In photographs his mother,
Savita Mahato, recently had taken at a local studio, to be shown to
the families of prospective brides, Mahato can be seen posing against
a movie set-like backdrop.
“I cannot understand”, Savita Mahato says, “what kinds of people would
kill a boy who did them not the slightest harm”.
Many others have died in similar circumstances. Karamchand Singh, a
noted chhau-dance performer, was executed in front of his primary
school students at Binpur last year. His crime was to have campaigned
for the CPI(M) despite Maoist warnings to dissociate himself from the
party. Pelaram Tudu, a locally renowned football player who supported
the CPI(M), was shot dead in another death-squad attack. So, too, was
Kartik Hansda, a folk artist.
Honiran Murmu, a doctor working in the Laboni area, was killed along
with staff nurse Bharati Majhi and driver Bapsi in October, after an
improvised explosive device went off under their car. No explanation
was offered by Maoists for the attack, why the vehicle was targeted,
but Laboni residents say the attack was intended to punish Mr. Misir
for renting out vehicles to the police.
In May, Maoists executed Haripada Mahato as he was bathing in a pond
outside his home in the village of Bhumi Dhansola. A former activist
with the Maoist-affiliated Kisan Mazdoor Samiti, Haripada Mahato had
left the movement in disgust a decade ago. He had since then worked as
a night watchman and polio-immunisation campaign volunteer at the
Medinipur Medical College.
“The Maoists said he was an informer for the police”, says Haripada
Mahato’s wife, Padmavati Mahato, “and we swore he wasn’t. But who can
win an argument with a gun?”
Related stories:
West Bengal cannot say ‘no’ to ban on Maoists: Buddhadeb
http://www.hindu.com/2009/06/24/stories/2009062457750100.htm
Centre bans CPI (Maoist)
http://www.hindu.com/2009/06/23/stories/2009062358320100.htm
Misguided outfits should be fought politically, says Left Front
http://www.hindu.com/2009/06/23/stories/2009062358350100.htm
Ban on Maoists will not serve any purpose: Karat
http://www.hindu.com/2009/06/23/stories/2009062360611000.htm
Lalgarh: it’s wait and watch
http://www.hindu.com/2009/06/23/stories/2009062360561000.htm
Mamata distances herself from PSBJC
http://www.hindu.com/2009/06/23/stories/2009062360571000.htm
Ready for dialogue if government agrees to some of our demands:
Maoists
http://www.hindu.com/2009/06/23/stories/2009062360551000.htm
Letters to the Editor on Lalgarh crisis
http://www.hindu.com/2009/06/23/stories/2009062353960801.htm
Consider people’s safety: Mahato
http://www.hindu.com/2009/06/22/stories/2009062254570100.htm
“Charge against Trinamool proved”
http://www.hindu.com/2009/06/20/stories/2009062056311000.htm
No link with Maoists: Trinamool
http://www.hindu.com/2009/06/20/stories/2009062060801000.htm
Help resolve Lalgarh crisis-Editorial
http://www.hindu.com/2009/06/19/stories/2009061955410800.htm
Trouble in Lalgarh - in pics
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/gallery/1160/
Problem at Lalgarh spreading: official
http://www.hindu.com/2009/06/17/stories/2009061759701100.htm
“PSBJC will accept democratic forces’ support”
http://www.hindu.com/2009/06/17/stories/2009061759711100.htm
Corrections and Clarifications
In a report "Maoist death squads executed dozens around Lalgarh" (June
25, 2009), two sentences were incomplete in some early editions. In
the fifth paragraph the sentence "Most of the killings were
concentrated in the twin blocks of Binpur and adjoining Salboni - the
precise areas where the Maoist-backed Committee Against Police
Atrocities", should have been "Most of the killings were concentrated
in the twin blocks of Binpur and adjoining Salboni - the heartland of
the Lalgrah violence."
In the 12th paragraph, the sentence "Pelaram Tudu, a locally-renowned
football player who supported the, was shot dead in another death-
squad attack", should have been "Pelaram Tudu, a locally-renowned
football player who supported the CPI(M), was shot dead in another
death-squad attack."
Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jun 25, 2009
http://www.hinduonnet.com/2009/06/25/stories/2009062559411000.htm
Maoist posters appear in Kandhamal
Staff Reporter
BERHAMPUR: Bombing by unknown miscreants and posters by alleged
Maoists against the Sangh activists has intensified tension in
G.Udaygiri area of Kandhamal district.
A poster in the name of banned CPI (Maoist) party threatening people
supporting the organisations of the Sangh Parivar appeared on a wall
of the G.Udaygiri hospital. This poster was written in Oriya. Police
has seized the poster and investigation was on to find out whether it
was the handiwork of Maoists or it was mischief of some miscreants.
According to senior police officials they are serious about this
threat poster as it has come up before the Christmas.
During past two years Christmas time has been tense due to communal
tension. Police officials suspect it may be an attempt by alleged
Maoists or some miscreants to disrupt the peace that has returned back
to the district.
This poster is being taken seriously as on Thursday evening some
unknown person had hurled bombs at the shop of one Nageswar Prusty.
Protesting against the bandh call and police inaction to nab the
culprit behind the bomb blast, the traders of G.Udaygiri had observed
a bandh on Saturday.
The poster by alleged Maoists had appeared after the bandh call.
It is alleged that some traders of the area are supporters of
organisations of Sangh Parivar.
So, the police is trying to increase security in the area to avoid
escalation of tension over allegations and counter allegations which
may take communal turn before the Christmas.
Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Dec 15, 2009
http://www.hinduonnet.com/2009/12/15/stories/2009121551360300.htm
Maoist posters appear in Kandhamal
Staff Reporter
BERHAMPUR: Bombing by unknown miscreants and posters by alleged
Maoists against the Sangh activists has intensified tension in
G.Udaygiri area of Kandhamal district.
A poster in the name of banned CPI (Maoist) party threatening people
supporting the organisations of the Sangh Parivar appeared on a wall
of the G.Udaygiri hospital. This poster was written in Oriya. Police
has seized the poster and investigation was on to find out whether it
was the handiwork of Maoists or it was mischief of some miscreants.
According to senior police officials they are serious about this
threat poster as it has come up before the Christmas.
During past two years Christmas time has been tense due to communal
tension. Police officials suspect it may be an attempt by alleged
Maoists or some miscreants to disrupt the peace that has returned back
to the district.
This poster is being taken seriously as on Thursday evening some
unknown person had hurled bombs at the shop of one Nageswar Prusty.
Protesting against the bandh call and police inaction to nab the
culprit behind the bomb blast, the traders of G.Udaygiri had observed
a bandh on Saturday.
The poster by alleged Maoists had appeared after the bandh call.
It is alleged that some traders of the area are supporters of
organisations of Sangh Parivar.
So, the police is trying to increase security in the area to avoid
escalation of tension over allegations and counter allegations which
may take communal turn before the Christmas.
Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Dec 15, 2009
http://www.hinduonnet.com/2009/12/15/stories/2009121551360300.htm
Maoists blow up culvert in Orissa
Sib Kumar Das
Posters opposing ‘Operation Green Hunt' put up
Maoists block road near Jogi-Palur
Landmines used to damage culvert
BERHAMPUR: Maoists on Saturday blew up a culvert on an important road
and put up posters opposing ‘Operation Green Hunt' in the Narayanpatna
block of Koraput district in Orissa.
They also put up posters near Roxy of the K.Balanga block of
Sundergarh district.
Deputy Inspector-General of Police (Southwestern range) Sanjiv Panda
said the Maoists used landmines to damage a culvert on the crucial
Narayanpatna-Laxmipur road near the Karki ghat. They also cut down
trees to block the road near Jogi-Palur.
At some places, the road was dug up and optical fibre cables were
damaged disrupting telephone communication in most areas of the
Narayanpatna block.
Mr. Panda said no one was injured as the blast took place early in the
morning. Additional forces were sent to the area.
Following threat of landmines, the security forces were moving with
caution.
The posters opposed ‘Operation Green Hunt' against the Maoists planned
at Dantewada in Chhattisgarh, in Malkangiri and Koraput districts of
Orissa and in parts of Andhra Pradesh.
Security had been tightened in the Narayanpatna block.
Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Apr 11, 2010
http://www.hindu.com/2010/04/11/stories/2010041159790100.htm
Binayak Sen condemns Dantewada massacre
Raktima Bose
“Dialogue is the need of the hour rather than intensifying security
operations”
Kolkata: Condemning the massacre of 76 security personnel by Maoists
at Dantewada in Chhattisgarh on April 6, eminent human rights activist
Binayak Sen said on Saturday that holding a dialogue between the
rebels and the government was the need of the hour rather than
intensifying security operations.
Dr. Sen was in prison in Raipur for two years for alleged Maoist links
but freed on bail in May last year, following widespread protests both
in India and abroad.
Speaking to The Hindu over telephone from Vellore, where he is
undergoing medical treatment, Dr. Sen said he supported neither the
government's nor the Maoists' violence against each other since both
led to large-scale displacement of people, social inequity and
injustice.
In a statement, he said: “We condemn and deplore the processes of
violence and militarisation that have resulted in the tragic death of
76 police personnel in Dantewada on April 6, as well as the deaths of
so many people on both sides of the ongoing conflict between the
Maoists and the state forces. We also deplore the attendant tragic
deaths of so many ordinary citizens whose deaths have gone unrecorded
and largely unmourned. We cannot and do not valorise recourse to
planned military strategy as a way to bring about social and political
change either by the state or by those opposing it. At the same time
we do mark the reality of structural violence and its role in
perpetuating the criminally high levels of inequity we see all around
us. We join ours to the many voices appealing for the cessation of
violence and the initiation of political dialogue to bring about peace
with justice and equity.”
Dr. Sen, a physician, said the very fact that 3.5 lakh people have
been displaced from 700 villages of Dantewada district alone was
indicative of the situation across Chhattisgarh.
Pointing to the malnutrition figures provided by the National
Nutrition Monitoring Bureau, which says 33 per cent of the population,
including 50 per cent of scheduled tribes and 60 per cent of scheduled
castes, suffer from chronic under-nutrition, Dr. Sen wondered what
prevented the administration from addressing this situation in regions
not affected by Maoist presence.
Referring to a long-term study undertaken by a small non-governmental
organisation, Jan Swarth Sahyog, which functions from the Ganiyari
village in Chhattisgarh's Bilaspur district, he said the people in the
region suffer from chronic malnutrition and malnutrition-related
diseases like malaria and pulmonary tuberculosis during the period of
August to November each year.
“There is no Maoist in this area. So the government argument that
Maoist violence is responsible for the terrible level of under-
development, poverty and inequity does not hold here…if body mass
index is monitored on a monthly basis, there is a dip of BMI when rice
harvest from the previous year runs out…The starvation leads to low
immunity of the body and so malaria sets in. Also 95 per cent of the
pulmonary tuberculosis cases have been found with BMI less than 18.5,”
Dr. Sen said.
Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Apr 11, 2010
http://www.hindu.com/2010/04/11/stories/2010041157011400.htm
Nitish questions strategy against Naxals
K. Balchand
NEW DELHI: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Saturday took a dig at
Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram's offer to resign in the wake of
the Dantewada massacre of CRPF personnel, and disapproved of his
strategy in countering naxalism.
During his interaction with the media at the Indian Women's Press
Corps, Mr. Kumar frowned at Mr. Chidambaram's action underscoring that
there was no need for such theatricals at such a critical juncture.
“Where is the need for it when all know that the Prime Minister will
reject it? Is there any need to talk so much?”
He lashed out at the Home Minister and Home Secretary G.K. Pillai for
the kind of language they used to hit out at those who digressed from
their opinion. “What language is this? How can you approve of Mr.
Chidambaram's language against West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb
Bhattacharjee? The Home Secretary says Bihar is not cooperating in the
fight against Naxalism.”
Mr. Kumar charged that both of them did not seem to be applying their
minds before saying anything. “They are making statements without
thinking of the issues. The Home Secretary would do better to leave
such issues to his political bosses. My status prohibits me, and will
it be proper to set my Home Secretary against the Union Home Secretary
to negate his folly?”
Basic problems
On the Centre's strategy to counter Naxal violence, Mr. Kumar
counselled that brashness barely yielded any gain. The Naxalite
problem could not be tackled through police operations. “You can have
limited success. There might be failures too. But this is no solution
to the basic problems.”
The Chief Minister said action was necessary if the law and order
situation so demanded and underscored that such actions were taken
even in Bihar. “But, where is the need to raise your tone or tenor.”
Development process
Mr. Kumar said it was equally important to unroll the development
process. That means development with justice and not just setting big
factories and projects which had no meaning to them.
The delivery system had to be toned up and corruption uprooted so that
the poor got their due.
“We are against violence and don't approve that it be countered
through violence. And it is not possible to counter this challenge
merely through the State's police force.”
Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Apr 11, 2010
http://www.hindu.com/2010/04/11/stories/2010041165291400.htm
Naxalites melt away into forest & villages Skip to content.Naxalites
melt away into forest & villages .
.Raipur, April 11: Even five days after the massacre of 76 security
personnel in south Bastar district of Chhattisgarh, the police and
paramilitary forces on Sunday continued to draw a blank, appearing far
from any position of advantage vis-à-vis their ongoing inter-state
joint operation to track down the Naxalites involved in the ambush.
A senior Chhattisgarh police officer engaged in this intense operation
told this correspondent on Sunday that after their primary lead that
the Naxalites had divided themselves into three groups and were
heading in three directions, it had been gathered through their
network of informers in the villages that the Naxalites had split into
even smaller groups. When asked about their weapons and ammunition,
the officer said that the Naxals usually hide them at the houses of
their trained cadres in the villages and that it is very difficult to
detect them. Once the Naxalites leave their formations, they pass off
as any villager by the roadside or in a busy village “haat (community
market)”.
Chhattisgarh additional director-general of police (anti-Naxalite
operations) Ramniwas reiterated on Sunday evening that they had
information that two “companies” of Naxalites (about 200 trained men)
had crossed over to Malkangiri in Orissa, but so far the search
operation in that territory has drawn a blank.
While the joint operation against the Naxalites continues in Bastar
region of Chhattisgarh and the adjoining states of Orissa and Andhra
Pradesh, and in the midst of the charge that the CRPF men had not been
given jungle warfare training before being posted in the Naxalite-
affected area, a committed body of men — 750 of them — are undergoing
gruelling jungle warfare training to combat Naxals at the Counter-
Terrorism and Jungle Warfare College (CJWC) near Kanker, on the Raipur-
Jagdalpur highway. The jawans being trained here are undeterred by the
massacre of the 76 CRPF men. When this correspondent talked to these
men, one of them said: “We are here on a mission and shall not deviate
from our goal.”
State police spokesman R.K. Vij said that besides those being inducted
into anti-Naxal operations from the Chhattisgarh armed police and
paramilitary forces, policemen from Jharkhand and Maharashtra have
also been trained at the CJWC.
Lalit Shastri
http://www.asianage.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=8684:naxalites-melt-away-into-forest-a-villages-&catid=34:top-story&Itemid=59
Naxal probe panel to visit spot this week .
Monday, 12 April 2010 03:40
.New Delhi, April 11: A one-man inquiry committee appointed to probe
the recent Naxals attack in Dantewada in Chattisgarh, which killed 76
CRPF personnel, is expected to visit the spot this week.
Former chief of Border Security Force E.N. Rammohan has already
started collecting relevant information, like the command structure,
hierarchy and the decision concerning the operation and quality of
training imparted to the Central security forces which were attacked
by the Naxalites. Besides, Mr Rammohan visited Central Reserve Police
Force headquarters here and met director-general of the the force,
Vikram Srivastava, on Saturday. Sources said that the probe committee
has sought call detail records of the mobile telephones used by the
deceased and injured personnel of CRPF during the encounter on April
6.
During his visit to the spot — Tarmetla, Dantewada district, and state
headquarters, Raipur — Rammohan will also interact with CRPF
officials, the local police and civil officials and injured jawans.
The inquiry committee will submit its report on April 24.
Sources further said Mr Rammohan will also gather evidence from family
members and others, who had spoken to some of the CRPF men during the
ambush. The 69-year-old, 1965 batch Assam-Meghalaya cadre IPS officer,
will also examine the response of the state police and the CRPF during
the ambush and post-ambush period, relief and rescue operations.
In his report, which will be submitted to the home ministry, he will
also suggest measures to mitigate lapses, if any, so that such
incidents do not occur in the future.
Age Correspondent
http://www.asianage.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=8758:naxal-probe-panel-to-visit-spot-this-week&catid=35:india&Itemid=60
India Naxal attack: State role under scanner
Monday, 12 April 2010 03:39
.New Delhi, April. 11: The role of the Chhattisgarh government has
also come under the scanner after the worst-ever Naxal attack in
Dantewada last week that left 76 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF)
men dead.
Sources in the Central security agencies revealed that specific
intelligence inputs about the possible Naxal attack in the region was
given to the state government in the month of March. However, a
section of top ranking officials of the state police did not share the
inputs with other senior police officials, sources said
Talking to this newspaper, a high ranking official of the Central
security agency said, “It becomes the duty of the top brass of the
police officials of the state to share intelligence inputs, provided
by the centre, with the officers, including para-military forces,
engaged in the nati-Naxal operations.”
Why not available inputs were discussed with senior officials holding
crucial posts in the state police, this must be probed, sources said,
adding that action must be taken against the erring officials.
“Who engaged the Central security forces in the area domination
exercise without even a single senior official of the state police?
Why not the operational map of the area was provided to the commanding
officer of the Central forces? These are certain questions which need
to be probed,” sources said.
Meanwhile, the CRPF has instructed its all battalions engaged in the
anti-Naxal operations in different states in the country to remain
extra alert and adhere to the standard operation procedure (SOP)
during force movements.
A senior official of the CRPF said, “With the Naxals warning of more
Dantewada type of attacks, our forces deployed in the Naxal-affected
states will have to remain on high alert. State police have also been
instructed to remain on high alert.”
The Dantewada massacre has brought to the fore the urgent need for a
nuanced approach among major political parties over tackling the
Maoist problem even though mainstream parties have favoured a tough
line.
The two main national parties have officially advocated a hardline
stand against the Naxals but voices have arisen from within for
addressing the basic issue of economic and social deprivation.
Age Correspondent
http://www.asianage.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=8757:naxal-attack-state-role-under-scanner&catid=35:india&Itemid=60
http://navanavonmilita.wordpress.com/india-ink-sid-harth-7/
...and I am Sid Harth
