Big crackdown against Maoists’ ‘overground’ supporters planned; forces nab 500 in CG

NEW DELHI: A first-time concerted crackdown has been launched against ‘overground’ Maoist supporters in various states and about 500 such people have been apprehended by the security forces in Chhattisgarh alone over the last one year, the chief of country’s lead anti-Naxal operations force, the CRPF, has said.

CRPF Director General R R Bhatnagar told PTI in an interview that this fresh action is being undertaken by them in coordination with state police forces with an aim to deny ‘space’ to the Left Wing Extremists and to counter them beyond the field operations.

The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) has deployed close to a lakh armed personnel and a heavy assortment of weapons and gadgets to tackle the Left Wing Extremism (LWE) in various states of the country.

We are now going to the villages and we are trying to see that action is taken against their (Maoists) overground supporters and workers, ‘jan militia’ and other people who give them the intelligence and local support.

“We are working with the local police and we are seeing that all the people who have been identified, either ‘jan militia’ or are wanted in different cases, they are rounded up (by the police). More than 500 people with the help of our forces have been taken into custody in the last one year in Chattisgarh. We are trying to see that their (Naxal) overall support is also reduced,” the DG told the news agency.

A senior official heading a special combat unit in Chhattisgarh later informed that all those people who have been found to have helped the Naxalite cadres in planning, aiding and executing an attack on security forces are the ones who are on their radar primarily and such persons are being tracked and apprehended or arrested as part of this new strategy to counter the LWE challenge.

Bhatnagar, a 1983-batch Indian Police Service officer of Uttar Pradesh cadre, said the paramilitary force is gradually increasing its footprints into the core Naxal areas and has opened at least 15 new camps in the highly impenetrable and inhospitable jungles and terrain of south Bastar in Chhattisgarh which shares borders with Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha and Telangana.