Maoists killed two farmers in insurgency-affected Bijapur district late Sunday night. Police sources said Maoist cadres attacked Chintagufa village in the district late last night and took the two farmers hostage.

“The farmers were picked up and taken to a nearby forest for defying the Naxalites’ diktat against cultivation,” said a senior police officer. Two farmers, Kalmu Dulla, 50, and Marwi Mura, 40, were first beaten up by Naxalites and later hacked to death. “The bodies of the two farmers were recovered on Monday from a nearby forest,” the senior police officer said.

Police sources said the attack followed a Maoist diktat, issued few days ago, through leaflets pasted in various villages of Bastar, wherein the extremists had instructed tribal villagers to desist from practising farming. Last week, armed Naxalites had torched a tractor and other household articles of a tribal farmer, Santosh Poriyami in Tamnar under Bijapur district. The victims were badly beaten up by extremists, in presence of the villagers, for going to their fields.

The outlawed Communist Party of India (Maoist) had recently issued a directive saying that “the order to stop farming in the Bastar area was being given to protest against the exploitation of the state’s natural resources by the Government”. The rebels had also exhorted the tribals to “stop farming and instead join the resistance movement to free the area of private and public firms”.

Meanwhile, coming down heavily on the murder of the two farmers, Chief Minister Raman Singh said it was another cowardly act by the extremists. “The incident proves that Naxalites are anti-tribal and do not want them to prosper,” he added. The ban on farming has been imposed in Narayanpur, Bijapur, Dantewada, Bastar and Kanker districts, days after the Maoists imposed a two-day economic blockade of the Maoist-affected regions of Chhattisgarh on June 26-27.