Inside A Naxal Den

The visitor came and gave me a detailed briefing, including instructions on how to avoid the police and potential snoopers. I was given codes and signs that would ensure my entry into the pwg armed squads or ‘dalams’ in the Bastar forest. I had to respond to the code name ‘Ramesh’. On a chilly late November morning, I took an early train to Raipur in MP. According to the plan, I visited the railway station, at 3 pm and nervously looked around for the contact persons—and broke into cold sweat as I exchanged glances with two alert-looking policemen on duty.

The cops turned away, it was then that I saw these two lean and thin, scruffily dressed lads, one of whom was carrying a Hindi magazine Maya and a packet of biscuits. The other had an unexposed film roll in his hand. The signs matched. I strolled up to them and said "Prakash!" "Ramesh", came the reply. I’d met the right guys, they’d lead me to the pwg’s "guerrilla zone".

Two days later, in the thick forests of Bastar I saw them in olive greens carrying firearms. These two lads were actually hard-core guerrilla fighters. Waiting for the pwg dalam to turn up, we spent the following night in a dilapidated shanty in a remote tribal village on the edge of the forest line—miles away from the national highway and centuries away from Delhi’s glitz. The next morning, I heard loud revolutionary greetings being exchanged: Lal salaam dada... Lal salaam!. Then I saw was a group of nine olive green-clad young men with heavy rucksacks on their back and AK-47 rifles and .303 rifles slung across their shoulders. The next 12 days inside the pwg with the ready-to-shoot Maoist guerrillas was a never-to-be-forgotten experience.

Inside The PWG