Maoist violence picks up in October

1: July 12 Three attacks on security convoys in Rajnandgaon district in Chhattisgarh leaves 36 cops dead.

2: October 6 The Naxals behead abducted Inspector Francis Induwar near Ranchi in Jharkhand.

3: October 9 17 policemen killed in a Maoist attack in Gadchiroli, Maharashtra.

4: October 20 Naxals attack Sankrail police station in West Bengal. They kill two cops and abduct inspector Atindranath Dutta. Later, free him in swap with 24 women with Maoist ties.

5: October 25 Four CISF personnel killed in a landmine blast by Naxals in Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh.

6: October 27 Activists of People's Committee Against Police Atrocities and known Naxal sympathisers hijack the Delhi-bound Bhubaneswar Rajdhani Express and take the engine driver as hostage.

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Railway's Response

• More Railway Protection Force (RPF) officers to be included in subsidiary multi-agency centre (SMAC), the apex state-level intelligence unit
• Improved coordination between Intelligence Bureau (IB), state police and RPF in Naxal-affected areas.
• Intensified vigilance on the tracks and increased security inside trains.
• Speedy recruitment of more RPF personnel, which has been pending for some time now.
• Integrated security proposal for major junctions across the country, drawn up by rpf earlier this year, to get priority.

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It’s the day after the Rajdhani Express hijack and there’s an eerie calm in Banstala, deep in the sal forests of West Midnapore in Bengal. The villagers are wary, expecting a police swoop at any time, but there’s also a certain sense of bravado at having pulled off one of the more audacious acts against the Indian state in recent times—the hold-up of the Bhubaneswar-Delhi Rajdhani Express for over five hours on the afternoon of October 27.

Most of the transgressors have disappeared into the jungles but some of the self-proclaimed “key organisers” of the attack, like Dhanapati Mahato, are around and still in a belligerent mood. “Even if we could not secure the release of Chhatradhar Mahato (the PCAPA, or People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities leader), we consider the operation a success,” he says. “We were able to hold up an important train with the entire nation watching. We wanted to give our demand a high-profile platform...to show the country the power of the people. We made our point.”

It’s the crack of dawn the day after the hijack and Dhanapati has agreed to return to the scene of action—the tiny Banstala railway station—with Outlook. As he talks, we are walking on the same section of the tracks where the passengers had been forced out the previous day. The placards demanding the unconditional release of PCAPA chief Mahato, strewed all over the station the day before, had been removed by the security forces. But less than 24 hours later, with no police or paramilitary in sight, some of them were back (see main photo).

According to the villagers, the driver should have halted the train after he saw the red flags being waved by the agitators on the track. “We wanted to create a stir, but we did not want violence. The train driver should have applied the brakes straight away. Our people were squatting on the tracks. The train would have crushed them if the rest of us had not started pelting stones,” says Dhanapati. He says it was he who “slapped the driver” when the train finally came to a halt. Unlike the Maoists, Dhanapati really didn’t mind being photographed. “We haven’t committed a crime,” he says. “It was a blockade. No one was murdered or hit. And the driver was not kidnapped as was reported, he was only asked to come down and sit with us at the station.”

Dhanapati denies Maoist involvement in the incident, attributing the audacity of the whole operation to the power of the people. “We had been planning an agitation ever since Chhatradhar Mahato’s arrest on September 26. There are 20 villages in this area and we have been holding meetings. Every party has blockaded trains before around here... so if the police tries to arrest us we will point out that every party’s leader has to be arrested for the same crime,” he says. As it turned out, the fir filed by the West Bengal police did not take any specific names for the crime.

Meanwhile, speaking to the people in the villages, some Maoist complicity does come to the fore. As an old woman (who wasn’t ready to divulge her name or village) put it, “We are all Maoists, and yes, I was there at the tracks yesterday and today I am hiding from the police.” She went on to add, “We are all expecting the police today. By this time (midday), I usually finish my work in the forest. But today I’m not going home in a hurry....”

It’s afternoon and almost every house in the nearby villages is deserted. We came across a woman bathing by a pond. “I was hiding in the jungle but now I have to go home and cook. I am afraid. I have never faced a police search before,” she says. So why did she join the protest if she was so afraid? “How can you live in the village and not join? You will be an outcast,” she replies.

The villagers here aren’t tight-lipped about their political leanings, Dhanapati least of all. “I’d say there is a lot of support here for Mamata Banerjee,” he says. One young villager points out that the police had conducted searches in some houses in the Banstala area after the Maoists kidnapped officer-in-charge at the Sankrail police station, Atindranath Dutta. Sankrail, bordering another forest in Midnapore, is around 10 kilometres from Banstala. According to the young man, “Dutta may have been kept here because Banstala is surrounded on all sides by Maoist pockets and was always seen as out of bounds for the police. That was violated when the police conducted searches here. So it was seen as the best place from where to launch the new agitation. There was a trade-off for Dutta with the government releasing some Maoist prisoners. This agitation too was for a trade-off....”