Naxal fear stalks Jharkhand, cops on the run

MANOJ PRASAD

RANCHI, OCTOBER 18: FOR a policeman in the far flung Naxalite infested areas of Jharkhand, a prize posting is any place without Naxals.

Armed constable Ajay Singh, 35, would be glad to bag just such a posting. From the morning of October 4, Ajay has been going to sleep hugging his self loading rifle (SLR) at the Bhandaria barrack-cum-police station in Garhwa town.

On October 4, three of his fellow armed constables and DSP Amlesh Kumar were blown to bits in a landmine explosion in Garhwa’s Salo forest. Naxalites had planted the deadly explosive. When pieces of their mangled bodies, wrapped in white, arrived at the police station, Ajay wept like a child. The station Inspector’s pleas failed to work.

Ajay sobbed off and on. His eyes are dry now but his fingers are edgy. All alone, Ajay now stands guard outside the Inspector’s office with his SLR, his suspicious eyes darting to every passerby, ears cocked for messages flashing intermittently on the wirless.
He feels so insecure now he has failed to deposit his SLR at the barrack magazine since that morning.

Aound a month earlier, nearly 150 km from Bhandaria police station in Latehar, Naxalites shot dead police constable Vajjan Murmu and his CRPF counterpart Dasai Paswan along with five others. Sub-Inspector Shiv Prasad got two bullets in his right leg and a longing to work in a Naxal-free area.

Near Churchu block in Hazaribagh the morale is somewhat better. A police constable and 11 CRPF men died in a landmine explosion there on September 23. CRPF Sub-Inspector Surendra Singh (not real name), however, is unwilling to carry on. ‘‘If we could help it, we wouldn’t work where officers are unable to prevent the deaths of their men.’’

The deaths have prompted Chief Minister Babulal Marandi to get at Naxalites. He has told DGP T.P. Sinha to crack down.

Sinha along with IG (Operation) R.C. Kaithal has been supervising anti-Naxalite operations monitored by the Union Home Ministry. The Centre has reportedly approved the deployment of 15 more companies of paramilitary forces over the 16 CRPF companies already stationed in the state.

Kaithal said: ‘‘After we started long-range patrolling with Jharkhand Armed Police and CRPF, Naxalites’ hideouts were busted, bunkers destroyed, tonnes of arms and literature seized and over 200 rounded up.’’

The police are crippled because of a near defunct intelligence network. The identities of Naxal leaders have proved elusive. Kaithal said as much: ‘‘We are a new state. We are trying to overcome the shortcomings.’’

The hostile terrain of Naxals’ operational area comes in the way of solving cases, Hazaribagh DIG Ashok Kumar said. ‘‘We need a helicopter,’’ he wrote in an article. Ram Shanker, an unemployed youth, has a simpler solution. ‘‘Employ us in the police as we know the terrain. And don’t forget to hold panchayat polls and get us funds,’’ he said.