Khagaria operation not our handiwork: CPI (Maoist) leader
Posted by Admin on October 4, 2009
PATNA: Two days after the killing of 16 people, including five minors, in Bihar’s Khagaria district, the CPI (Maoist) leadership on Saturday expressed ignorance about who executed the killings and why.
"Had our boys done it, we would have come to know about it the very next day. Also, our boys follow up our operations by leaving behind pamphlets and wall writings. We even issue press notes to the media. None of these followed the Khagaria carnage," a top leader of the banned outfit told TOI over phone from his hideout.
The Naxal leader has been trying to get in touch with the ‘local cadres’ to ascertain the facts. "We will let you know if they confirm their involvement but that doesn’t look even remotely possible," he said.
He also pooh-poohed police’s theory that the massacre was engineered by an ex-Maoist. "Police are trying to plant all kinds of stories," he said adding, however, that if one goes by what has appeared in media reports, the carnage seems to be a result of a ‘class conflict’.
Naxal watchers, meanwhile, said the Maoists need to sit up and do something about preventing Khagaria-like killings. After they drew flak from even their sympathisers for killing 42 villagers, including women and children, at Dalelchak in Aurangabad district in May 1987, they released a press note vowing they would not kill women and children in future.
They have by and large kept their word till date. In 1999 they slit the throats of 34 upper caste Bhumihars in Jehanabad’s Senari village. TOI
