Though its only in the last few months that the brutality of Naxal violence has become evident in a big way,the fact is that more people have been dying to the bullets of Moaists every year in India than terrorists ever killed in any single year. Addressing the chief ministers of Naxal-affected states here,Home Minister P Chidambaram reeled off figures to underscore the gravity of the challenge posed by Naxalite groups. He said between 2004 and 2008,the Naxalites had killed about 500 civilians every year. This number rose to 591 in 2009. In just the first six months of this year,325 civilians have been killed in Naxal violence,a figure that senior Home Ministry officials concede is a conservative calculation. But this alone is more than the combined death toll of all major terrorist strikes in India in 2008,one of the bloodiest years in recent times that culminated in the ghastly attacks in Mumbai on November 26. And this is not counting the casualties amongst the security forces,which are in the range of 150 to 200 every year for the past few years. This year has been particularly bad,with 209 security personnel losing their lives to Naxal violence,a large number of them in the high-profile attacks at Dantewada in Chhattisgarh or Silda in West Bengal. And despite the governments best efforts,the Naxalite groups only seem to be gaining in strength and spreading out to new areas. According to a confidential note on the internal security situation circulated to Union ministers,the government has admitted that in the first six months of this year,Naxalite activity was noticed in as many as 158 districts of the country,a sharp increase from the 133 districts where Naxalites were seen to be active in the previous year. Incidents of Naxal violence this year have been reported from 85 districts. In 2009,violent incidents were limited to only 67 districts. In fact,four districts and 17 police stations witnessed incidents of Naxal violence for the first time in their history. The note also observes that while Chhattisgarh and Orissa continue to be Naxal strongholds,there had been a perceptible increase in Naxal activity in poll-bound Bihar in the last few months. It says that new groups sympathetic to the Maoist cause had been springing up in many areas of the country,some even in Mumbai which had remained untouched from till now. Since the joint forces of central and state police moved into some areas of West Bengal some time back,there has been a sharp increase in Naxal activity and violence in those areas as well,the government note says. And contrary to what Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee has been trying to tell the world about the collusion between CPM and the Naxalites,the note observes that the Naxals have directed their ire primarily at CPM cadres.
