Separatist Insurgencies in India - News and Discussions.

[mehru]

AFP: '2010 bloodiest year for India's Maoist rebellion'

Bihar fights Maoist insurgency with goats - Reuters -

 

[pulsar220]

India rebel group in Assam 'offers talks'

The leader of a separatist group in India's north-eastern Assam state has offered to start negotiations with the government, officials said.

Arabinda Rajkhowa, chief of the United Liberation Front of Assam (Ulfa), has written to the state chief minister Tarun Gogoi seeking a dialogue.

Mr Rajkhowa, who was being held on charges of sedition, was released from prison earlier this month

Ulfa rebels have fought for a separate Assamese homeland since 1979.

Mr Gogoi told reporters that he had received a letter from Mr Rajkhowa "saying the Ulfa wants to hold talks with the government".

"But they are yet to take a formal decision and we are waiting for them to do so," he said.

Mr Gogoi said that the rebel chief had told him that the group's high command will meet soon and take a formal decision on the issue.

Mr Rajkhowa, 54, has said in the past that Ulfa was ready for peace talks with the Indian government.

However, other members of the Ulfa leadership are known to oppose talks.

In 2009, the government in Bangladesh launched a crackdown on Indian separatists operating out of Bangladeshi territory.

More than 50 rebel leaders and activists have been handed over to India since then, while others have been arrested while trying to enter the country to avoid capture in Bangladesh.

BBC News - India rebel group in Assam 'offers talks'

 

[Dance]

Maoists blow up school

Medininagar (Jharkhand): Maoists blew up a middle school in Palamau district in Jharkhand early on Wednesday, police said.

About 50 to 60 rebels reached the school at Chadara village and blasted the building using dynamite, Superintendent of Police Anup T. Mathew told reporters here.

No one was in the school when the explosion took place, the Superintendent added. — PTI


The Hindu : National : Maoists blow up school

 

[bhagat]

Maoist have blown up tracks in 3 places today. Bokaro and Ramgarh districts fall in the state of Jharkhand. Two tracks were blown up between Yogeshwar and Dania railway stations in the Bokaro Dist. The third track blown up was near Maiel station of Ramgarh district. Maoist are enforcing shutdown for the day. Nearly 10 trains in the Coal India Cord (CIC) section have been stranded at Bokaro dist.

Maoist blasting up of tracks, stations and warehouses have becom common in the states of West Bengal, Odisha, Bihar and Jharkhand.

Train services are normally restored within 6-8 hours depending upon the conditions.

 

[Abu Zolfiqar]

Ex-ULFA man training Maoists in Orissa, Jharkhand

They were assigned the job of training Maoists in Orissa and Jharkhand, Rourkela SP Diptesh Patnaik told reporters.

"They were supposed to get Rs 4.8 lakh for imparting training to Maoists in the two states," he said, adding huge quantity of explosives, Maoist literature and posters were seized from them.

The arrests were made during a joint combing operation launched after an encounter with the Maoists near Saranda forests yesterday in which three hardcore ultras including "area commander" Mohammed Musleem were gunned down.

fullstory


Three hardcore women Maoist cadre arrested

Parlakhemundi (Orissa), Feb 12 (PTI) Three hardcore women Maoist cadre, involved in several crimes, including Nayagarh armoury attack, were arrested today in Orissa's Gajapati district.

"During combing operation by the district police, the women cadre identified as Basanti Pattamajhi, Monita Desamajhi alias Prami and Laxmi Pattamajhi were arrested from their Baliganda village in Adaba police station," Superintendent of Police Sarthak Sarangi said.

The trio, in their early 20's, was allegedly involved in several crimes including attack on a bus at Raipanka, mobile tower blast at Birikot, killing of a gram rakshi at Katama, forest beat house blast at Paniganda in Gajapati district and Nayagarh armoury attack in 2008.

Besides, Monita and Laxmi were also involved in torching of at least 14 vehicles used for road construction at Pindiki and landmine blast targeting a police vehicle Andhari Ghati in which policemen were injured.

The trio was forwarded to the court, Sarangi said.

fullstory

 

[Abu Zolfiqar]

Maoists kill special police officer in ChhattisgarhMonday

Raipur, Feb 14 (IANS) Maoist guerrillas killed a special police officer Monday in Chhattisgarh's restive Bastar region, police said.

Munnalal Markam was killed in Gondpalli village in Dantewada district, more than 400 km south of state capital Raipur.

He was posted at Dantewada police station and had gone to a relative's house at Gondpalli when the rebels killed him with sharp-edged weapons, sources in police headquarters here told IANS.

Maoists kill special police officer in Chhattisgarh | Siasat


Maoists blast school building

Gaya, Feb 15 (PTI) Armed Maoists blew up a state-run school building at Barhara in Chakkarbandha forest in Naxal-hit Gaya district, police said today.

Over 50 ultras armed with sophisticated weapons surrounded the school, commanded the villagers watching a cultural programme to leave the premises and detonated dynamites to blow up the building late last night.

The building was earlier being used as a CRPF camp, the police said.

Raids were on in the forest area to apprehend the ultras.

fullstory

 

[ajtr]

Reds will thrive all over soon.

 

[Abu Zolfiqar]

Orissa district collector kidnapped by Maoists

Malkangiri (Orissa), Feb 17 (PTI) The District Collector of Orissa's Maoist-hit Malkangiri has been kidnapped by Maoists, who are demanding withdrawal of Central forces and release of jailed ultras.

Malkangiri collector R V Krishna along with a junior engineer went missing last evening when he was on a visit to the remote Chitrakonda area, a Maoist stronghold about 85 km from here, to attend a camp for local development, SP Anirudh Singh said.

There was no trace of the 30-year-old IAS officer after he went from the camp held at Badapada bordering Andhra Pradesh to see a culvert on a road nearby on a motorcycle along with two junior engineers and another person, Chitrakonda Tehsildar D Gopal Krishnan said.

While the collector and a junior engineer remained untraced, two others reached Badapada

fullstory

 

[KS]

Six Naxals shot dead in Bihar encounter

Rest in pieces.

Shiv Sena are the taleban of india.....i remember reading about valentines day in Mangalore

i couldnt sense any 'love' in the air when girls were getting thrashed by unmanly men

Lol...Shiv Sena = Taliban. Lol

Shiv Sena are a political organisation while the Taliban are UN declared terrorists. And you should develop your googling skills when you say it was Shiv Sena who hit the pub-goers in Mangalore.

 

[WHITESMOKE]

30 Naxals gunned down in Chhattisgarh, claim police
30 Naxals gunned down in Chhattisgarh - Rediff.com India News


RAIPUR: Police on Monday claimed to have gunned down 30 Naxals in a fierce encounter in Chhattisgarh's Dantewada district after an ambush by the extremists left three policemen dead and nine others injured.

Additional director general (naxal operations) Ram Niwas said that a police team of 145 jawans was on a search operation in the the Chintalnaar area, when the Naxal struck.

"In the ambush by the Naxals, three of our men were killed and nine were injured," said Niwas.

He said that the police believe "to have killed 30 Naxals" in retaliatory action.

"Firing has stopped. We are now looking for bodies," Niwas said.

Reinforcements were being sent to the area and the injured are being air-lifted, police.

 

[Windjammer]

Eight Soldiers Die As Rebels Ambush Bus.

Suspected rebels sprayed bullets on a bus carrying Indian paramilitary soldiers in a remote forest area in the north east, killing eight and wounding another 11 soldiers, police said Tuesday. The attackers ambushed the vehicle and fired from automatic weapons from both sides of the road last night. The ambush happened in Kokrajhar district, nearly 155 miles from Gauhati, the capital of Assam state.

 

[Abu Zolfiqar]

Naxalites Blast House in Gaya

Naxalites today triggered a bomb blast at a house and decamped with cash and valuables in Bihar's Naxal-hit Gaya district.

About 100 Naxalites attacked the house of Jenardan Rai, a distant relative of Bihar Assembly Speaker Udai Narain Choudhury, in Bodhi Bigha village and triggered the blast, police said.

The Naxalites beat up Rai, looted cash and valuables and decamped with two vehicles.

Rai has been hospitalised.

fullstory

 

[Abu Zolfiqar]

Police constable killed in landmine blast by Maoists

Jamshedpur, March 24: A police constable was killed while another injured in a landmine blast triggered by Maoists at Ghatsila in Jharkhand Thursday.

The blast took place after an encounter between the security personnel and Maoists at Daimari area in East Singhbhum district in the course of an operation to flush out extremists, DIG (Kolhan) Navin Kumar Singh said.

Police said that the blast occurred when security personnel, including district police, were scaling nearby hills after the encounter.

The constable killed was the body guard of the Deputy Superintendent of Police, Ghatsila, the police said.

Additional forces have been rushed to the spot and a massive search operation was launched in the Maoist-affected area, which borders west Midnapore of West Bengal.

Police constable killed in landmine blast by Maoists | Siasat


CRPF jawan killed, another injured in encounter

Medininagar (Jharkhand), Mar 25 (PTI) A CRPF jawan was killed while another suffered injuries in an encounter with CPI(Maoists) near Matnag village in Palamu district, a senior CRPF officer said today.

CRPF DIG B K Sharma told PTI that the security personnel were returning to their base in Palamu after recovering the bodies of an electrical engineer Jitendra Singh and another person Mukesh Yadav, who were allegedly abducted by Maoists from Porsam in Latehar district when they were fired upon by the Maoists last evening near Matang village.

One CRPF jawan Amandeep Singh, a resident of Hoshiarpur in Punjab was killed in the encounter while another jawan D K Rathi, a resident of Alwar in Rajasthan was injured, he said.

Sharma said the encounter lasted till this morning and the injured jawan has been airlifted to Ranchi for treatment.

fullstory

Maoists blast school building in Bihar

AURANGABAD: Armed Maoists blasted a state-run school at a village in Bihar's Aurangabad district, police said.

Over 50 ultras surrounded the school building in Tetrain village under Deo police station area and triggered a dynamite blast to blow it up late last night, they said.

Three rooms of the school building were destroyed in the blast, they said.

A powerful bomb was also recovered from adjoining Yadupur village where the Naxalites had blown up a school building previous year.

Raids are on in the area to nab the ultras.

Maoists blast school building in Bihar - The Times of India

 

[Han Patriot]

ahh, soon you will see more of this rebellion spreading in India. We shall have Kashmir rebellion, Sikh rebellion, Dravididan rebellion, North East Rebellion, Maoist rebellion. =)

Well maybe the people are just sick of peaceful protest, re-electing the same crooks with a different name. Time for some bloodshed. I forsee a Mid-East solution in India.

 

[mehru]

Mother of insurgencies or reinvention?

M.S. Prabhakara

Has the Naga insurgency come to terms with its unrealised and, indeed, unrealisable sovereignty aspirations?

In the early 1980s (when this correspondent returned to Guwahati as working journalist after an eight-year absence), insurgency in the northeast was limited to Nagaland, parts of Manipur and what was then the Union Territory of Mizo Hills. In Nagaland, the Naga National Council (NNC), political face of the oldest of the insurgencies in the region, was led by Angami Zapu Phizo, then in exile in Britain. Despite the challenge posed by a faction of the NNC that had recently split after much rancour on both sides and formed itself into the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN), the NNC remained the dominant voice of Naga nationalistic assertion. In Manipur, Naga insurgency was active those days in the Naga-inhabited hill districts mainly in Tamenglong, while in the Imphal Valley, several outfits, some of them fighting one another as much as the Indian state, were active: the United National Liberation Front (UNLF), the Peoples' Liberation Army (PLA), the People's Revolutionary Party of Kangleipak (PREPAK) and the Kangleipak Communist Party (KCP). In the Union Territory of Mizo Hills, the Mizo National Front (MNF) arrived at the Talk-Talk-Fight-Fight stage, and was on the way to give up its secessionist agenda, sign a peace accord and become a legitimate party of the government. Insurgency had not become a generalised fact of life in the region including Assam, though formally the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) had been founded in April 1979.

The objectives of all these organisations, including the nascent ULFA, were broadly the same: independence and sovereignty, the restoration of sovereignty that ‘lapsed' to the people these organisations claimed to represent when the British left India but which India refused to concede.

The undeniable historical fact underlying this idea of ‘restoration of sovereignty' as against the ‘demand for sovereignty' is that beginning with the British annexation of Assam following the defeat of Burma in 1826 in the First Anglo-Burmese War, the colonial government had embarked on consolidating the boundaries of these newly acquired vast territories, progressively annexing more of these borderlands and extending its own boundaries. The annexation process was neither painless nor fair; nor even conclusive, the last most evident in the description of some of the ‘new' territories in the old maps as “excluded,” “partially excluded” and “unadministered” areas. The bland bureaucratic prose of the introductory chapter of the Assam Land Revenue Manual says it all.

However, received wisdom had it even those days that the resolution of Naga insurgency was central to resolving other insurgencies, actual and incipient. Long before such disaffection manifested itself among other people of the region, tribal and non-tribal, Phizo himself had tried on the eve of Independence to enlist the support of the largest and most advanced of the people, the Assamese, as well as other tribal people who, in course of time, were to form the core of Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya and Mizoram — the last two then politically and administratively part of Assam — for realising his plan for an Independent Nagaland. He also urged them to seek an independent status outside India.

Being the oldest insurgency in the region, which had also lent some material support to other disaffected elements, this perception was somewhat justified. This has been especially so since the NNC split and the formation of the NSCN in early 1980. Even though the NSCN in due course also split into two factions, and the NNC has refused to fade away, the NSCN (I-M) bearing the initials of chairman Isak Swu and general secretary Thuingaleng Muivah remains the dominant voice of the sovereignty aspirations of the Naga people.

However, all these insist that settlement of the “Naga political issue,” that is restoration of Naga sovereignty and independence — the resolution of what has come to be known in the Naga nationalist rhetoric as “the mother of all insurgencies” in the region — is central to resolving the other problems in the region.

This perspective has been expressed several times by Muivah since the NSCN (I-M) began talking directly to the Government of India nearly 15 years ago. During this period, the NSCN (I-M) leaders have met several Prime Ministers in foreign lands and in India, and have had prolonged dialogue with ‘interlocutors,' initially in cities in Europe and South East Asia, and later in Delhi. Peace of a kind has prevailed in Nagaland and in the Naga inhabited areas of Manipur, though the “Naga political issue” remains unresolved. The other side of this peace is the parallel administration of the NSCN (I-M), which is evident to the most casual visitor to Nagaland and the Naga-inhabited areas of Manipur. Perhaps one can see this as the Naga people's unique way of reconciling the irreconcilable, the “resolution of the Naga political issue” without actually getting the lost sovereignty restored. By simply putting these tricky issues on the back burner, the State government and the Government of the People's Republic of Nagalim coexist in Kohima and near Dimapur. Situations where legitimately constituted State governments face challenges far more dire prevail in many parts of eastern and central India.

How has this unique “resolution of the Naga political issue” impinged on the ferment in the rest of the region? Has the “mother of all insurgencies” in the region, whose leaders now travel on Indian passports with all implications of securing such a document, come to terms with its unrealised and indeed unrealisable sovereignty aspirations and injected a dose of realism into the sovereignty aspirations of other groups with far less legitimate claims than the Naga people who, under Phizo, formally declared Independence on August 14, 1947?

One significant development in the insurgency scenario is the “arrest” of senior leaders of ULFA and their resolve to hold talks with the Government of India without any precondition. Another is the “arrest” of UNLF chairman Rajkumar Sanayaima, who maintains that he was abducted by Indian agents in Dhaka and brought to India. Unlike ULFA leaders who are on bail, Sanayaima remains in prison, defiant about not talking to the Government of India except on four preconditions being accepted, the core of which is a plebiscite under U.N. supervision to ascertain if the people of Manipur want to remain part of the country. The differences in the government's approach to the NSCN (I-M), the ULFA and the UNLF are as striking as is the relatively realistic approach of the first two which too were insisting that the core issue in any talks with the government had to be sovereignty. Like the lady in the song, the NSCN (I-M) and ULFA leaders kept saying they would never consent, and yet consented. Will the UNLF follow suit?

There are other interesting developments on the insurgency front. Since the mother of all insurgencies began speaking to the government, other insurgent or terrorist groups have become active; these outfits have survived and even prospered by their capacity to reinvent themselves, though not their stated aims and objectives, and are carrying on. The most curious instance of such reinvention is the path taken by Dima Halong Daoga (DHD), based in the North Cachar hills of Assam, one of the two Autonomous Hills Districts of the State, the other being Karbi Anglong where too the United Peoples Democratic Solidarity (UPDS), like almost every similar outfit, split into pro-talks and anti-talks factions. The DHD's reinvention of itself by using a section of the Indian state, in this case, the administration of the North Cachar Autonomous District Council, a constitutional body, to channel development funds meant for the district to itself, an outlawed outfit, is indeed breathtaking. The charge sheet by the National Investigative Agency available on NIA :: Cases of NIA provides the most salutary education on the reinvention of insurgencies.

The Hindu : Opinion / Leader Page Articles : Mother of insurgencies or reinvention?