Chhattisgarh on alert after Maoists’ I-Day boycott call

From correspondents in Chhattisgarh, India, 03:01 PM IST

An alert was sounded in Chhattisgarh and thousands of police and paramilitary personnel were shifted to vulnerable areas in the interiors of the Bastar region following Maoist rebels’ call for boycott of Independence Day functions Wednesday.

‘Maintaining the trend of boycotting the national days, Maoists have called for a boycott of Independence Day functions this year too and have called for observing Aug 15 as black day,’ Girdhari Nayak, Chhattisgarh’s inspector general (Maoist operation), told IANS Monday.

‘Police and paramilitary forces deployed in the state, mainly in the vast forested interiors of the Bastar region spread out over 40,000 sq km, have been put on high alert in the wake of the rebels’ call,’ Nayak stated.

‘Security has been revamped all over Bastar with extra police personnel deployed in and around government schools, buildings and establishments that will host I-Day functions Wednesday.’

The mineral-rich Bastar region, comprising five districts of Kanker, Bijapur, Narayanpur, Bastar and Dantewada, is known as the Maoists’ hotbed since the early 1980s and has emerged as the country’s terror nerve centre.

The region has witnessed several cold-blooded murders of civilians and security personnel since June 2005 when locals launched an anti-Maoist civil militia movement called Salwa Judum, which was later backed by the government with arms and money.

The movement has so far forced over 50,000 people – mostly indigenous tribals – to desert their villages and settle in government-run relief camps due to threats from Maoist rebels.

Police estimate that there are at least 5,000 hardcore Maoists equipped with sophisticated assault weapons, landmines, rocket launchers and explosives active in the state, backed by at least 20,000 workers armed with rifles and traditional weapons such as bows, arrows and axes.

http://www.indiaenews.com

650 more Maoists added to hit-list

HYDERABAD: Though the state government has been repeatedly announcing its intention to renew a fresh dialogue with Maoists, the police have included 650 new names to its hit-list of 1,200 Maoists, where the reward amount on each of these individuals has been scaled up.

Most of these names are from districts where the state police has been claiming that the Maoist movement has been on the downslide. Visakhapatnam rural, which registered a steep rise in Maoist violence over the past five months has 113 new names, the highest in the list of fresh names.

This is followed by Warangal with 103, Guntur and Anantapur with 67 each, Adilabad with 48 and Mahabubnagar with 43 names. Nellore district ranks last with only four wanted Maoists. Earlier, there were only 18 Maoists in Visakhapatnam rural and only nine Maoists in Anantapur district who carried reward amounts.

In a GO issued by the state in the last week of July, before extending the ban on Maoists by another two years, the state intelligence department submitted a fresh list with nearly 650 new names — rated as the ‘most wanted’ by the police for waging a war against the state. Most of the wanted Maoists in the fresh list are from Telangana (286), followed by coastal Andhra (264) and Rayalaseema (83).

The state has increased the reward amount on all these wanted Maoists and their leaders by nearly Rs 16.2 crore. The government gives this amount as incentive to any of the identified Maoists who want to surrender and join the mainstream.

However, government statistics reveal that most of the rewards are cornered by trigger-happy special police parties who are out on a mission to eliminate rather than bring Maoists to justice. Police records show that there were 1,233 Maoists with rewards on their head in 2002. At least 182 of them have been eliminated in the past five years, while 83 were arrested or have surrendered on health grounds. The Maoist movement has been at the receiving end over the past few years with nearly 600 of their important cadre getting killed, including 140 women Maoists.

The state has also raised the reward amount on each of the 27 members from the Maoist State Committee from Rs 8 lakh to Rs 10 lakh. This was done following the elimination of state committee leaders including Madhav, Matta Ravi Kumar, Sande Rajamouli and Wadkapur Chandramouli by the special police in alleged encounters in the last two years, especially after the failure of peace talks with the Congress government.

Some of the present state committee members include Shakamuri Appa Rao, Patel Sudhakar Reddy and M Balakrishna, who is the Andhra-Orissa-Border (AOB) Committee secretary. Similarly, 13 members of the Maoist Central Committee, including its secretary Muppala Lakshmana Rao alias Ganapathy, carry a reward of Rs 12 lakh each.

TOI

Cellphone traps top rebels in cop net

From Stalinist-Maoist

Bokaro, Aug. 12: Five top Maoist leaders, including one accused in the Mahendra Singh murder case, were arrested after tracking cellphones used by the rebels, police said today.

More than Rs 9.5 lakh in cash, 250 cartridges, two laptops with names of donors, which includes several top politicians of Jharkhand and Bihar, few cellphones, Maoist literature and training materials from Ranchi, Giridih, Patna and bordering areas of Jharkhand and Bihar were also seized.

High-level sources in the police said that the Maoists arrested in the raid — in which three police teams were included — were secretly kept at a CRPF camp in Ranchi for interrogation, as rebels, in a retaliatory action, might attack the camp to set their comrades free.

The sources said the prime accused in the Mahendra Singh murder case, Jayant alias Kunal alias Tuddu, who lost one of his eyes due to firing in an attack on CISF camp at Khas Mahal area four months ago, was arrested while receiving treatment at Sankara Nethralaya in Chennai along with Prakash in the ophthalmology department of the hospital.

Although there was another rebel present at the hospital, he managed to escape the net.

The laptops also revealed that the rebels had been assigned to attack Ranchi, Jamshedpur, Dhanbad and Bokaro.

The sources added that Bokaro police got the clues after recovering one of the cellphones of a “top Maoist leader during the attack on the CISF camp in which one of the leaders injured his eyes”.

After receiving treatment at Ranchi and Patna, Jayant went to Chennai and got admitted to Sankara Nethralaya from where he kept in touch with his men and arms suppliers in Jharkhand and Bihar unaware that the police were engaged in a round-the-clock survelliance.

The other arrested rebels include Prayag Mahto alias Prahlad of Nawadih (Bokaro), Basudev Mahto of Madhupur (Girdih) and Arup Tuddu of Degagaddha (Nawadih).

Pappu Jain, an arms supplier-cum-businessman from Madhupur (Girdih) besides two youths of Patna, who are arms dealers, were also arrested during the raid.

Sources added that the Maoists had conspired to also target top police officers like Anil Palta, inspector P.K. Mishra and three senior politicians, including former chief minister Babulal Marandi and a senior BJP leader, who was reportedly once the donor of the outfit.

Deputy inspector-general (coalbelt) Anurag Gupta confirmed that two Maoists, including Jayant and Prakash, were arrested by a team of Bokaro police but did not divulge the details of the place from where they were held.

The Telegraph

Red fear keeps Koda on toes

Red fear keeps Koda on toes

SUDHIR KUMAR MISHRA

Ranchi, Aug. 12: Reports of a posse of armed rebels present as civilians and a bomb hoax led chief minister Madhu Koda to beat a hasty retreat from a public meeting in Palamau today. A huge gathering had assembled at a high school playground in the Tarashi village of Manatu block, when Koda landed there this morning. He was to inaugurate a road linking the village with Sonepur and a bridge over Amanat river, and lay foundation of another bridge and road a few kilometres away. Soon after landing at Manatu, he received a call from the police headquarters, which “prohibited” him from participating in the celebrations and asked him to take a “U-turn” immediately. Intelligence reports received by Koda claimed that Naxalites had not only “planted powerful bombs beneath his dais, but were present in large numbers at the venue”. Suicide squads, too, were not ruled out. District police chief Udayan Singh hurriedly announced that no one should approach the chief minister with garlands or bouquets or even touch his feet. Koda was being accompanied by water resource minister Kamlesh Singh, rural development minister Anosh Ekka and Panki’s RJD MLA Videsh Singh. While Kamlesh Singh and Videsh Singh reportedly insisted that the chief minister go ahead with the scheduled programme, the security personnel threatened to use “discretionary powers” to stop him. Though Koda attended the inauguration and foundation-laying ceremonies, he was not allowed to join the loan mela and address a public meeting. While Koda remained seated in the school building, Videsh Singh distributed the loans and addressed the public gathering on his behalf. “I have already approved the immediate repair of Panki-Daltonganj road. All the new projects will be completed at the earliest possible. Large turnouts at my public meetings proved that people are happy with the functioning of my government. We are doing our best to fight Naxalism,” Koda said.