Anti-Maoist cells in offing as Delhi feels the ultra-Left heat

Raipur, January 28 After keeping the establishment in over a dozen states and some 150 districts on their toes, Naxalite extremism seems to have now reached the Capital. The Delhi Police has identified 16 police stations as prone to “Maoist infiltration”.

Twelve of these stations fall in the north-west police district.

The threat has forced the security apparatus to plan for an anti-Naxalite cell in the city, say Intelligence sources.

Sources in Delhi Police say senior officers are in touch with their counterparts in Naxal-affected states such as Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, and West Bengal. “The arrangement is essentially for intelligence sharing to check the spread of ultra-Left extremism in Delhi,” a police source said.

Chhattisgarh DGP Vishwaranjan said, “States like Gujarat and Delhi, where some Maoist activity has been detected, get in touch with us through the Intelligence Bureau.”

About the proposed anti-Naxalite cell, sources said it has been planned on the lines of the anti-terror unit of Special Cell. “Unlike the Special Cell, which attempts to thwart terrorist activities in general, the focus of this cell would entirely be on containing Maoist extremism.”

Delhi Police Commissioner Y S Dadwal neither confirmed nor denied the proposal of forming an anti-Naxalite cell but told Newsline that the city police are looking into Naxalite menace with “seriousness”.

Senior officers said the idea of forming the cell follows revelations by several arrested senior Maoists ideologues that the extremists were planning to move towards big cities, the national capital being one.

Intelligence inputs gathered by the security forces reveal that several meetings between Naxalite cadres and their sympathisers have already taken place in Delhi.

Cop Shoots Self, Says Maoists Did It

Apparently desperate for a transfer from this Maoist-infested eastern Vidarbha district, a police constable shot himself and tried to pass it off as Maoist attack last weekend.

Anand Kulkarni, posted in remote Etapalli village of the district for the last 10 years, was highly disturbed about the health of his old parents in Pune in western Maharashtra, police sources here said.

The young constable created quite a flutter during a sports festival as he limped to the ground from the nearby bushes and shouted that he was hit by a Maoist bullet when he was answering a nature's call.

The police officers who were led to the spot by the injured cop grew suspicious when they saw a bullet buried in the ground besides a cartridge, a water bottle and a bullet-riddled handkerchief.

Quizzed whether the Maoists fired at him from the sky, Anand spilled the beans saying he fired a shot in his left thigh and another in the air in a disturbed state of mind.

'He was recently engaged to be married and apparently tried the trick in the hope of getting transferred to his home district', Superintendent of Police Rajesh Pradhan told IANS.

'The constable should have apprised his superiors of his problems if any, through the laid down procedure; he could have received a personal hearing from me,' said Pradhan.

Pradhan clarified that a constable recruited in a district is normally supposed to serve the entire term there.

R.M. Rokde, additional superintendent of police, told IANS that the on-going sports festival was meant to be an awareness and confidence building measure about the government schemes for the people in the Maoist infested district.

'The Maoists, who have recently surrendered before the district collector and are being rehabilitated, are specially participating in the festival', he said. Such desperate acts committed during such occasions would send a wrong signal, he added.

Describing the constable's attempt as a serious matter, Pradhan said an offence has been registered against him and he would also have to face a departmental inquiry

Monitor ‘red corridor’ in North East: Centre

Worried over the gradual extension of the 'red corridor' to the Northeast, the Centre has asked the intelligence agencies to closely monitor the growing network of the Maoists and their nexus with the militant outfits of the region.

"The Home Ministry has sent instructions to the intelligence departments of different security forces, seeking detail information about the network established by the Maoists in several parts of Northeast, especially Assam and Nagaland," a top defence official told PTI here.

The Centre's instruction comes in the wake of a revelation from an arrested senior Maoist cadre in Jharkhand that the rebel group has already formed units in different districts of Assam, including Karbi Anglong and Golaghat.

Defence sources confirmed that CPI-Maoist central committee member Mahru Mahto alias Narayan Mahto, who was arrested in November last from Bokaro, had revealed during interrogation about the growing network of the Maoists in the Northeast, especially in Assam.

What is more worrying, according to the official, is the nexus between the Maoists and some rebel groups of the Northeast like All Adivashi National Liberation Army (AANLA) and the NSCN (IM).

HT

Top Naxal Papi Reddy plans to give up???

Tuesday January 29 2008 08:15 IST

WARANGAL: CPI (Maoist) Central committee member and Bihar State in-charge, Lanka Venkata Papi Reddy alias Ranganna alias Lachanna, is planning to surrender to the police due to ill health, it is learnt.

The 47-year-old top Naxal leader, most wanted in Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Jharkhand, is carrying a reward of Rs 10 lakh on his head. The police department has recommended to the State Government to raise the reward amount to Rs 12 lakh.

Papi Reddy hails from the remote village of Takkellapadu in Atmakur mandal of Warangal district.

He went underground in 1980 and worked for the party in various capacities including member of the district committee, secretary of Mulug area committee, member of North Telangana Forest Division Committee (NTFDC) and squad commander of Warangal district committee up to 1990.

Then he moved to Bastar forest and strengthened the party there. He worked as secretary of the Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee (DKSZC) for a long time before the present secretary Kosa.

He has been working as the Central committee member of the party for the one decade. After the state-sponsored tribal movement Salwa Judum came into existence in Bastar region three years ago, the Maoist party strategically shifted him to Bihar and made him in-charge of the State party unit.

About 45 cases were registered against him in four states. Papi Reddy married a tribal woman in Bastar 15 years ago. He has a 13-year-old daughter, Lanka Tejasri, who is studying Class VIII in a school at Hanamkonda in Warangal district.

Papi Reddy kept his daughter in the care of his mother Lakshmikanthamma, who lives in his native village Takkellapadu. She discontinued her studies after Class VI due to financial constraints.

Learning about Tejasri’s plight at a meeting with the parents, children and other relatives of Naxalites, Warangal Superintendent of Police Soumya Mishra adopted her and made arrangements for her studies. The SP is looking after her for the past 15 months.

Maoist leader’s whereabouts a mystery

HYDERABAD: Confusion reigns over the whereabouts of CPI (Maoist) State secretary Sambasivudu as his relatives allege that he was picked up by police while the latter deny the same.

The parents and a brother of the Maoist leader have already met Home Minister K. Jana Reddy twice with a request to produce him but Mr. Reddy clarified to them that he was not in the custody of police.

DGP S.S.P. Yadav refused to meet them when they sought his appointment. Mr. Yadav was supposed to report to the State Human Rights Commission on Tuesday following an appeal by Sambasivudu’s relatives. It was rumoured that Sambasivudu was apprehended by an outfit styled ‘Blue Tigers’. The AP Kranthi Voice Sangh alleged that the Blue Tigers was a name assumed by Greyhounds, the anti-naxalite force of State police.

Press Release – PUCL, Gujarat is disturbed by the arrest of Mr. Kutty, the editor of the Maoist paper, People’s March

PRESS RELEASE
 

Date: 27^th January 2008

 

PUCL, Gujarat is disturbed by the arrest of Mr. Kutty, the editor of the Maoist paper, People's March. Earlier the Chhattisgarh Government arrested the prominent human rights activist Dr. Binayak Sen.

This trend of Governments arresting activists and the journalist who have different viewpoint must be condemned. If India is to emerge as a genuine democracy, everyone must have a right to freedom of ex-pression. The only limit is that it should not endanger the life of another person. We may disagree with someone, but we must defend her/his right to express her/his viewpoints.

The litmus test of a democracy is the right to dissent. Democracy is not about showing the door to one who dares to disagree with your viewpoint. The right to dissent is an integral part of democracy. Democracy is about granting the right to dissent from within the fold.

Dr. J. S. Bandukwala
Rohit Prajapati
People's Union for Civil Liberties, Gujarat.

___________________________________________________________________
         Rohit P rajapati & T rupti S hah
        37, Patrakar Colony, Tandalja Road,
         Post-Akota, Vadodara – 390 020
        GUJARAT, INDIA
        Phone No. + 91 – 265 – 2320399
         Email No: (1) rt_manav@sancharnet.in (2) rohit.prajapati@gmail.com

Keralites with Bengal connection cautioned

Thiruvananthapuram • Anyone in Kerala who had also lived in Bengal, beware! The Kerala police could take you for a Maoist, raid your premises and launch proceedings. This is what happened to C Jayashree, the former principal of the Oriental English Medium School at Thriprayar in the central Kerala district of Thrissur. Her Bengal connection is that she had lived in Bengal for two years as part of her daughter’s education.

Two vanloads of policemen barged into her residence yesterday, supposedly searching for a laptop that had belonged to CPI (Maoist) Central Committee member Malla Raji Reddy. Both Reddy and his wife, Suguna alias Sangeetha, were arrested from a town near Kochi in December.

The laptop, according to the police, contained secret files and correspondence of Malla Raji Reddy and this has been taken for safe keep by someone close to the jailed leader, already facing various charges, including murder, in Andhra Pradesh.

Jayashree had come under the police radar after the local netas of the ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist) alleged that she was “a woman with dubious identity because she had lived in Bengal for two years and had links to Maoists”. The police searched in vain for hours and left the house, threatening her and husband, K A Appu because they had refused to sign on the mahzar without t reading the contents.

Former Supreme Court justice V R Krishna Iyer — after Jayashree apprised him of the police action — rang up Home Minister Kodyeri Balakrishnan and asked him to stop such “senseless police acts against innocent citizens”. The Minister apparently had no clue to what had taken place and promised “to look into the matter”.

Local CPM activists have been at loggerheads with Jayashree for running a campaign against brick-making units that sprung on what had been once an extensive stretch of paddy. Some 700 migrant labor, especially those from Bengal, make up the major workforce. They live close to brick-kilns at make shift camps lacking in proper hygiene and sanitation, seriously impacting the local environment.

Jayashree and concerned people of Erayamkudi and Elvaur panchayats on the Ernakulam-Thrissur border formed a people’s committee and launched a satyagraha on November 29 last year, demanding the closure of brick-kilns and resumption of paddy cultivation. “This antagonised the local CPM leaders, who have thrived on the brick-making industry. They had tried all possible things against us but when we then realized we wouldn’t relent, they branded me a Malla Raji Reddy sympathizer”.

But Jayshree says there’s no giving up. She had taken the case right up to Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan. The Revenue Divisional Officer had cleared a plan to resume paddy cultivation. The people’s committee plans to plan to sow the seeds in February, hoping to restore paddy on nearly 700 acres.

Publisher held for links with Maoists

Raipur, January 23 A Kolkata-based publisher was arrested on Wednesday for his alleged links with Maoists, police said.

“Asit Sen Gupta was arrested after huge amount of literature related to the banned Naxal outfit CPI (Maoist) was recovered from his house in Tikrapara area of Raipur,” a senior police official said.

Gupta was apprehended and his house raided after the women naxal commanders, arrested yesterday, revealed their links with him, said police.

A local court here, meanwhile, remanded Maoist spokesman Gudsa Usendi’s wife Malti and another woman naxal commander to police custody till January 29.

Freelance journalist Prafulla Jha, also arrested yesterday, was sent to police custody till January 25, police added.

Police conducted raids at a couple of other places today after 96 firearms, including nine foreign-manufactured pistols, and 23 wireless sets were recovered from Raipur and Durg district in the last two days.

Code Red: No Dissent In Marxist Land

Activists decry the arrest of People’s March editor saying he was denied several fundamental rights

KA SHAJI
Kochi and Thrissur

INTERNAL SECURITY has often been the cover for the State to clamp down on people with an ultra-Left background. In the latest case, the editor of a Kerala based pro-Maoist monthly, People’s March, was arrested a month ago from his office in Trikkakara near Kochi. The 68-year-old editor, P. Govindan Kutty is on an indefinite hunger strike in judicial custody to highlight the human rights violation. But barring a few activists of the People’s Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL), civil society in the highly literate state still seems to be completely unmindful. The PUCL activists have threatened to launch an agitation near the Kerala High Court protesting against the unlawful manner in which the arrest was carried out.

The Kerala Police and Home Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan have said that a close watch is being kept on activists demanding the protection of Kutty’s rights. They have also said they would not allow anyone like him to run any publication that voices dissent against State atrocities. Authorities at the Central Jail in Viyyur are reported to be injecting glucose drip to Kutty as he is determined not to break the fast. Activists say he is often straitjacketed to inject the drip. At the time of filing this report, he was being shifted to the Government Medical College in Thrissur.

According to PUCL state president PA Pouran, Kutty is continuing his fast alleging that even the minimum legal procedure was ignored and the basic rights of a prisoner, including access to a lawyer, had been denied him. When he was arrested and remanded to judicial custody in December, the authorities insisted that he could talk to his lawyer only in the presence of jail officials.

Kutty, who was a government servant, had come in contact with Maoist thought while working in Andhra Pradesh about two decades ago. He returned to Kerala five years ago and launched his small publication, which sells only a few hundred copies. The publication has never been proceeded against and meets legal requirements such as registration with the Registrar of Newspapers for India and has permission to be carried at concessional rates by the postal department.

Charges against Govindan Kutty are framed under Sections 134, 124A, 133B of the Indian Penal Code and under the 1967 Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, which has never been used against a journalist. One of the main charges against Kutty is that he wrote an article some five years ago hailing the Maoist attack on the then Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu.

Human rights activists say the arrest and the consequent developments raise several disturbing questions. “First of all, it exposes the palpable intolerance being shown by the police and the present government in Kerala towards any kind of dissent. The second is the scant respect for human rights and the fundamental rights of every citizen, including prisoners. The third is the selective and arbitrary manner in which the civil society in Kerala, including intellectuals and the mainstream media, seem to behave even on issues where fundamental rights are violated,” says NP Chekkutty, noted journalist and editor of Malayalam daily Thejus.

PUCL’s Pouran says Kutty was arrested soon after the Andhra Pradesh Police picked up two Maoist activists, Malla Raja Reddy and Suguna, from Angamaly near Alwaye on December 17 last year. The two were living among construction workers from outside the state. The AP team had come in plainclothes without informing local authorities as required by law, and was attempting to get away with the two until the local people stopped their vehicle. It was only then that the AP Police agreed to produce the two in a court and get a transit warrant.

Such secret raids seem to have become a routine affair. In June 2007, another Maoist, Raja Mouli, was forcibly taken by a group of AP policemen from the Kollam railway station. He was not produced in any court and his body was recovered two days later in Andhra Pradesh.

THE KERALA Police, which raided the offices of Govindan Kutty alleging he was helping Malla Raja Reddy find shelter in Kerala, still maintain that he is a man of terror. But they could not find any evidence to link him to Reddy and hence the decision to charge him for an article written five years ago. It is also said the police manipulated the mainstream Malayalam media to demonise Kutty. The stories about his personal life were carried without his version. Only a handful of media houses took his version of the story, thereby highlighting the police’s blatantly false claims.

While opposing his bail application in the Kerala High Court, the police said Govindan Kutty was providing ideological backing to Maoists of different streams for the last five
years and his release would help Naxalism grow in Kerala. But the home department has no answers as to why they allowed him to engage in such activities for the past five years
and what prompted his arrest in December.

“We are not against taking proper legal action against him if he is guilty. But throwing basic human rights to the wind in the name of Naxal raids is not justified,” said Pouran.

From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 5, Issue 4, Dated Feb 02, 2008

Top Maoist Sambasivudu arrested ?

HYDERABAD : The special police arrested state Maoist secretary Sambasivudu and his colleague Kudumal Ravi from the Andhra-Orissa border late on Thursday night, according to reliable sources.

sadf Sources said Sambasivudu and Ravi were training locals along with Guthi Koya tribals brought from the Dantewada region of Chhattisgarh when they were surrounded by Greyhounds personnel and arrested. About 40 tribals escaped into the forests.

The Vizag superintendent of police, Akun Sabharwal, refused to confirm any arrest of Maoists during last couple of days. Earlier in Hyderabad, the State Human Rights Commission asked for a report on the reported arrest of Sambasivudu.

The commission told the director-general of police, S.S.P. Yadav, to submit the report by 9 am on January 26. Lakshmamma, the mother of Sambasivudu, had approached the commission chairperson, Justice B. Subhashan Reddy, on Friday stating that her son had been arrested on January 20 and that his life was under threat.

Constable rapes 10-year-old, tribals protest

GIRIDIH: A 10-year-old tribal girl was raped by a cop in a remote village of Giridih districtin Jharkhand leading to protests by hundreds of tribals armed with bows and arrows at a police station. Arvind Kumar, 24, was arrested on Friday and district police chief M L Meena said he would be dismissed from service. The cops were in the village for an anti-Maoist operation.

According to the girl's elder brother, his sister had gone from their village Ganhar to collect firewood at Chandwa, 17 km from Giridih, along with her six-year-old brother when three policemen approached them. "Two of the policemen kept my brother in their custody while the other cop took my sister to the nearby jungle," he said in a complaint to the police. The girl's father had died a few years ago.

He said the three cops later gave Rs 500 to his younger brother and told him not to disclose the incident. When the girl didn't return home even after several hours, her mother went to the jungle with her neighbours and found the girl unconscious.

Another Nandigram in making in Rajasthan

“You can come and drop bombs on my village. Kill me,” Bhanwar Singh, a 75-year-old farmer, thundered before government officials as his hands trembled violently. “That is the only way you can get my land!” Grandfathers wept. Children lay down on roads. Everyone else in the Rajasthan village angrily told the carloads of government officials that no one would give what they had come for: their farmland. Far removed from national attention, the next Nandigram is simmering in the border district of Barmer, Rajasthan.

The Rajasthan government has planned to build the state’s largest power project in partnership with private firm Raj West Power Ltd in the district’s Bhadres village. More than 20,000 acres of village land need to be acquired for the Rs. 5,000-crore, 1,000-megawatt project. Government officials began surveys this week to finalise compensation money for land acquisition — the last step in the process.

More than 60,000 people — and, more importantly, 250,000 livelihood-providing cattle — live across 29 villages in this area, and villagers are refusing to sell their land for any amount of money. They allege that the company, Raj West Power, is the real gainer, not the state or nation as the government argues, and certainly not the farmer. The company refutes this, saying the project will generate huge job opportunities for the local populace.

http://www.indianpad.com/story/185077