Kishenji To NDTV: Train drivers not hijacked, All reports are false

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Lalgarh tribals threaten to strike govt offices

KOLKATA: Lalgarh has turned out to be a laboratory from where Maoists are carrying out their experiments successfully. A day after People’s
Committee against Police Atrocities (PCPA), the tribal forum from Lalgarh which has so far distanced itself from Maoists, announced it has turned into an armed outfit, the militia force on Tuesday jumped into action, keeping passengers of a Delhi-bound Rajdhani Express hostage for five hours.

Hundreds of villagers, armed with tribal weapons, took part in the operation along with some carrying firearms. Now, police believe that PCPA, so far thought to be a frontal outfit of CPI(Maoists), may carry out more operations.

On Monday, PCPA spokesperson Asit Mahato had said its militia force would now target government offices. ‘‘We have planned to take control of the government offices in Jangalmahal,’’ said Mahato.

Unlike in other Naxal-hit states of Jharkhand or Chhattishgarh where attacks are carried out by trained Maoist squads, common villagers took part in Tuesday’s operation in Bengal. According to police, the participation of villagers is an experiment of the Maoists to show their mass base. Maoist politburo member Kishanji has said they have taken Lalgarh as a model, which may show a new way of Maoist movement.

Though the entire operation was done by villagers, it never went beyond the control of their leaders. The style of operation shows that the Maoists have already imparted training to the villagers of Jangalmahal in carrying out armed operations. ‘‘If the villagers directly participate in an armed struggle, it will be major trouble for police,’’ says a cop, supervising Lalgarh operation. TOI

PCAPA has big following in Bengal’s tribal belt

The People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCAPA), which has claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s blockade of the Rajdhani Express, is an apex organisation for uniting the people of Lalgarh and the tribals against alleged atrocities of the police and CPI(M) in West Bengal.

The group was first heard of in the later half of 2008. Spearheaded by 45-year-old Chhatradhar Mahato, a local tribal leader, the PCAPA enjoys the loyalty of lakhs of people from the tribal-dominated West Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia districts of Bengal. Its influence started with 22 villages and now extends to 47.

The PCAPA is regarded by many as a mouthpiece of the Naxals, but the group has denied such links.India Today

PCPA block train during indefinite strike

KOLKATA: The driver and assistant driver of the New Delhi-bound Bhubaneswar Rajdhani Express were abducted Tuesday by activists of a Maoist-backed tribal outfit at a station in West Midnapore district of West Bengal, police said.

Railway and police sources said the 2443A UP Rajdhani Express was stopped at 2.45 p.m. in South Eastern Railway’s Kharagpur division by a group of people who were squatting on the track at Banstala Halt station a little after the train had left Jhargram.

“The agitationists entered the drivers’ cabin, beat up both the driver and assistant driver, and then abducted them,” Additional Director General (Railway Police) Dilip Mitra told IANS.

Driver K. Anand Rao and assistant driver K.G. Rao sustained injuries and were missing, Mitra said.

A district police force, which started off for the spot, was ambushed and one constable was injured, he said.

A large force of Railway Protection Force (RPF) and General Railway Police has been sent, Mitra added.

A South Eastern Railway spokesman said security personnel have cordoned off the train, and all passengers are safe.

The agitators were members of the Maoist-backed People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCAPA) which has called an indefinite shutdown in West Midnapore district in support of its 33-point charter of demands. The charter includes “stopping police torture on innocent tribals” and “withdrawal of joint security forces” deployed to flush out Maoists from the Lalgarh belt in the district.

Jharkhand: Produce Maoist leader Ashok Mahato before the court

RANCHI: Police on Monday denied charges that security forces have arrested Ashok Mahato, a member of the CPI(Maoist) South Chotanagpur Zonal Committee, and started preparing to combat the bandh called by the Maoists from Tuesday midnight.

Samarji, spokesperson of the South Chotanagpur Zonal Committee, on Sunday released a note to the press, demanding that mahaot be produced in court and before media as they feared that he may have been killed by police in a fake encounter.

The press note claimed that Mahato was arrested on October 2, under Sonahato police station in Ranchi but police have neither produced him in court nor before the media, raising questions about police’s actual intention.

Denying that Mahato had been arrested, Ranchi senior superintendent of police Praveen Kumar, on the other hand, said: "We have produced whoever was arrested on Sunday before the media."

Two persons, Prahalad Mahato and Mangla Kumari with a 9mm pistol and levy posters, were arrested from the Garupiri forest area on the border of Angara PS and Namkum PS here on Saturday.

Two others, Kaleshwar Mahato and Surendar Mahato, were detained but later released after interrogation and proper verification by police as they had no links to the Maoists.

Kumar, however, said they are prepared for the bandh and preparations have been done to prevent any untoward incident in the district. "We have asked police in the rural areas to tighten vigil and regular patrolling will be done on the national and state highways," said Kumar.

Meanwhile, police on Monday intensified search in the forest areas of Angara, Namkum and Rahe blocks to look for the Maoists injured in the police encounter early on Sunday.

"We have specific information through our sources and villagers that at least four Maoists have succumbed to bullet injuries. But their bodies were taken away by the other members of the squad while one body has been recovered," the SSP said.TOI

Cops shoot rebel, committee threatens attack – Maoist held after 7-hour fight

OUR CORRESPONDENT
The injured Maoist in Midnapore Medical College and Hospital. (Samir Mondal)

Midnapore, Oct. 26: The People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities exhorted supporters to attack government offices on a day security forces captured an injured Maoist guerrilla near Lalgarh after a 1000-bullet fight.

“The security forces have unleashed a reign of terror. They are torturing people. We have called an indefinite bandh in West Midnapore district from tomorrow and asked our supporters to dig up roads and block them with trees. We’ve also told them to loot government offices in West Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia,” said Asit Mahato, the committee spokesman after Chhatradhar Mahato’s arrest.

The tribal resistance group today confirmed that its activities were no different from those of its Maoist drivers. “Our supporters will loot police stations, block and panchayat offices and other govern-ment establishments. We will arm them with weapons robbed from CPM goons,” Asit said. That is also how the guerrillas work.

“We will carry on with our movement till the forces are withdrawn from Lalgarh,” Asit added.

West Midnapore superintendent of police Manoj Verma said the forces were prepared to deal with the threat. “All police stations and central force officers have been alerted.”

Torture by the joint forces and the administration forced us to pick up arms: PCPA

LALGARH: People’s Committee against Police Atrocities, the Lalgarh tribal forum that has all along denied links with Maoists, announced on Monday
that it has turned into an armed outfit, ‘Sidhu Kanu Gana Militia’. The announcement came with the claim that PCPA members had looted 10 firearms by raiding a CPM armed rally in Goaltore.

PCPA spokesperson Asit Mahato, who replaced Chhatradhar Mahato, said the tribal forum would “no longer continue democratic processes of rallies and agitations”. “We have formed the People’s Militia Force,” he said. “After facing continuous torture by the joint forces and the administration in Jangalmahal, PCPA has decided to pick up arms to combat the forces.”

PCPA had been carrying out a ‘democratic movement’ since November 2008 when it was raised to protest ‘arbitrary arrests’ in the wake of the ambush on the chief minister’s convoy.

Just after the Sankrail attack, Maoist leader Kishanji had warned that villagers were looking for firearms to take on the forces and that the weapons looted from the police station were being distributed among them.

Since Monday morning, security forces on routine patrol were surprised to face strong resistance in villages like Teshkan, Makli and Hiraban-dh. Villagers seemed to be firing on security forces, which puzzled officers until Mahato came out with the statement. Soon after that, the militia opened fire on the Dharampur police camp, triggering a gunfight till late in the night.

Mahato threatened that the militia would soon hit state and central offices and government agencies. He called for an indefinite strike in Jangalmahal from Tuesday. “Police have rounded up over 350 common villagers and charged them with sedition and murder. They did not even spare elderly women. They are occupying schools, depriving our children of education. They torture villagers every day,” alleged Mahato.

Senior police officers didn’t make much of the threat. “Mahato’s announcement indicates that the reins of the Lalgarh movement are in the hands of Maoists. It will now be easy for us to pick up PCPA members who’ve been working for guerrillas for the past year under the guise of PCPA,” said a senior officer.
“If they’ve turned into a militia, they can no more cla-im innocence as mere villag-ers. Our task will be easier,” DGP Bhupinder Singh said. TOI

Green Hunt: Eight killed in Chhattisgarh

New Delhi – At least four police officers and four Maoist militants were killed in India’s central state of Chhattisgarh, which was placed on alert Monday amid intelligence reports that the rebels could strike urban areas, officials and news reports said.

The police officers from the Central Industrial Security Force were killed Sunday evening when Maoists triggered a landmine blast to blow up their jeep, senior police official RK Vij told reporters.

The explosion took place in a village in the Dantewada district, a stronghold of the rebels, located about 400 kilometres south of the state capital, Raipur.

The police were part of the security force at iron-ore mining facilities at the state-run National Mineral Development Corp.

Security forces also gunned down four Maoist insurgents, including a woman, in three separate shootouts Sunday in thickly forested areas of the state’s Bijapur and Narayanpur districts, the IANS news agency reported.

Meanwhile, security in and around key installations in Raipur was intensified after intelligence reports that Maoists with access to rocket launchers were keen to strike urban areas to halt security operations against them.

With more than 40,000 police and paramilitary troopers planning to raid guerrilla hideouts in the remote, Maoist-dominated areas of the state, the banned Communist Party of India-Maoist was desperate to take the battle to towns and cities, particularly Raipur, officials told the IANS.

The Media Question

A leaflet issued by Correspondence and Radical Notes

Admittedly it has been an old problem with most movements, that they have treated the media only as a means to an end, ‘a way of making themselves heard,’ and so long as they got some coverage with the help of conscientious friends within the media, they were satisfied. The larger dynamics of the media, as a certain sort of work, in a certain sort of work place, with human agents who are workers here, has not been addressed. Newspapers and news channels should be and can be the strongest arms of a democratic society; they can make sure that the voice of the people finds representation. Though cliché, one has to point out how the media can raise difficult questions, but the onus is upon journalists as responsible citizens and in their capacity as workers to raise them.

The decidedly undemocratic tenor of mainstream newspapers and news channels, whose editorial bosses seem to be dummies through which the state on the one hand and multinational capital on the other preach their doctrines, is not merely a sign of the larger move away from democratic values, but also of the way in which journalism is becoming an alienated activity. Responsible journalism, bent upon bringing out the democratic truth languishes as the unholy nexus of the state and moneyed interest decides the ‘line’ of a newspaper. The inability of journalists to raise their voices against recent pay-cuts in houses like The Times of India (TOI) is not unconnected from the destruction of democratic space within journalism and mass media. Both of these get subsumed in the large movement away from true democracy – maximization of profit that a few make, in the last analysis determines all these tendencies. That is to say that the general antipathy to democratic movements visible in the lack of honest media coverage and an anti-people, non-democratic shift in the Indian situation at large not only go hand in hand but are also born out of the same tendencies.

Initiative Against War on People: Statement and meeting

Source: Sanhati Initiative Against War on People

Invitation: Meeting of people’s organisations and individuals: At Gandhi Peace Foundation, DDU Marg, Delhi 5 PM on 27th October 2009.

The Indian government has deployed 100,000 troops in addition to the existing paramilitary and police forces in parts of central India, including Chhattisgarh, Orissa and Jharkhand, Maharashtra Lalgarh – Jungalmahal area of Bengal – a vast area inhabited by mainly tribal people. Forces are being withdrawn from Jammu and Kashmir and the Northeast to join battalions of CRPF commandos, the ITBP, the CoBRA and the BSF. There is also talk of bringing in the Rashtriya Rifles – a paramilitary force that is directly guided by the Indian Army created especially for counter-insurgency work known for its notoriety in Kashmir and Northeast in the past few decades, and the purchase of bomb trucks, bomb blankets, bomb baskets, and sophisticated new weaponry. The Air Force has already been deployed and a full-scale air operation is in the offing.

Prior to this military build up in these regions a sort of hysteria about the ‘deteriorating internal security environment due to Maoist threat’ is being created in an attempt to manufacture consent for this war on the Indian people. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh repeatedly stated that ‘left wing extremism’ was the gravest internal security threat. This raises a basic question – Why does the state need to go to war against its most deprived, impoverished and oppressed population, and inside its own territory?

Central and eastern parts of India are rich in mineral wealth that can be sold to the highest bidder. All that stands between politicians/ big money bags and this wealth is the tribal people and their refusal to consent to their designs. Addressing a conference of heads of different paramilitary, intelligence and police forces a month ago, Manmohan Singh stated that the mineral resources in the regions of tribal people remained untapped due to resistance, which affected the foreign investment.

West Bengal police IG says Maoists network is difficult to crack

The Maoist supporters came from several districts of Andhra Pradesh are at the Naxalite rally in Hyderabad. The historic rally after 14 years is conducted by the Naxal outfit. SEPT-30/2004

Maoist network can’t be cracked overnight: WB
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Kolkata: Cracking the Maoist network in West Bengal will not be easy, top police and administrative officials admit days after the rebels cocked a snook at the authorities with the dramatic abduction of a cop in Sankrail near the Lalgarh region.

“It would not be right to call the Lalgarh operation totally successful right now. The Maoist network can’t be cracked overnight and it’s not a very easy task either. You have to give some more time,” Surajit Kar Purakayastha, the state inspector general of police (Law and Order), told IANS.

It has been over four months since a massive security offensive was launched in the Lalgarh region of West Midnapore district to flush out Maoists. While it has not seen much success yet, police insist that investigations into the rebel network are yielding positive results.

“The outcome of the investigation has been satisfactory, especially after the arrest of tribal leader Chhattradhar Mahato,” Purakayastha said.

Around August, Mahato spearheaded a Maoist-backed movement in Lalgarh under the banner of the People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCAPA). Police also arrested a Maoist commander, Chandra Bhushan Yadav, who used to operate in neighbouring Jharkhand. He has been handed over to the Jharkhand police.

However, the Sankrail episode has left many in the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M)-led government redfaced.

Terming it as “unfortunate”, state chief secretary Ashok Mohan Chakraborty said the government would take steps to prevent the recurrence of such incidents.

“We’re taking adequate measures by formulating necessary security strategies now. We’ll tighten security arrangements at all police stations in West Midnapore district,” Chakraborty said.

In the audacious daylight raid last week, about 40 Maoists had stormed into the Sankrail police station and shot dead two police officers and abducted officer-in-charge Dutta. He was handed over to a section of scribes by the ultras in exchange for some tribal Maoist suspects.

Additional Director General (CID) Raj Kanojia told IANS: “So far the state Criminal Investigation Department (CID) has arrested four people for allegedly carrying out Maoist activities across the state.

“Yes, we’ve got several important leads from those arrested and the investigation is progressing.”

Many photographs and other incriminating evidence have surfaced before the investigating agency that established the links between Maoists and Mahato, he said.

Indian democracy in a state of emergency: Arundhati Roy

In her latest series of essays, Arundhati Roy sounds deeply dismissive of the Indian democracy and perhaps supportive of the Maoist struggle. Why does she take these positions? That’s the key issue explore today with Arundhati Roy.

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Kiran Thapar: Hello and welcome to Devil’s Advocate. In her latest series of essays, Arundhati Roy sounds deeply dismissive of the Indian democracy and perhaps supportive of the Maoist struggle. Why does she take these positions? That’s the key issue I shall explore today with Arundhati Roy.

Let’s start with your cynical view of Indian democracy. In your essays, you say the ‘Beacon is fading,’ you say it’s being hollowed out and emptied of meaning, you say that Indian democracy no longer can be relied upon to deliver the justice and stability we dreamt it would. Why have you come to this conclusion?

Arundhati Roy: It is pretty obvious that in the last 60 years of our democracy what we have is a situation in which the poor are getting poorer and poorer, the rich are getting richer. I am not suggesting by this that we should go back to some older form of discredited despotic or colonial regime. I am trying to analyse what is the problem with democracy now. Why are the institutions of our democracy – the courts, media and Parliament – letting the people down? In a democracy, they are meant to act as checks and balances but actually they are serving as a cover to be as undemocratic as possible.

Karan Thapar: So you are suggesting two important things. Firstly, you are saying that the institutions of democracy have actually failed to act as checks and secondly, you are saying that the poor, who I presume are the vast majority of India, are not benefiting from Indian democracy sufficiently.

Arundhati Roy: Of course they have protection but the fact is that we are now in a situation of emergency. The human developmental index shows that more than 80 per cent of the people of India are living in conditions of extreme poverty. We have the world’s most malnutritioned children. The Dalits and the Adivasis are living in conditions of famine by any world indicators when more than 50 per cent of them are malnutritioned.

• Govt at war with Naxals to aid MNCs: Arundhati

Karan Thapar: So the state of India’s dispossessed and poor is proof that Indian democracy has failed?