Shishir Gupta(With Nitin Mahajan in Raipur)

NEW DELHI, MARCH 2: At a time when Naxalites and their sympathisers are trying to infiltrate the industrial belts around Delhi, Mumbai, Pune and cities right up to Jammu, new evidence suggests that they are also trying to build urban guerrilla warfare capabilities like rigging remote-controlled explosives devices in cars, even human bombs.

Internal security officials confirmed that a laptop seized following the arrest by Jharkhand police of Jayant alias Kunal alias Tudu on August 12 last year contains literature and designs on rigging explosives for human and car bombs. Prime accused in the murder of CPI-ML Jharkhand MLA Mahendra Singh, Jayant was picked up by police from Chennai. The seized laptop, which was examined by security agencies, indicated that the Naxalites were not only networking with other insurgent groups in India like the ULFA but were interested in guerrilla warfare by non-state players in the Middle-East.

Seized material also shows that the extremists have been training in the use of 12.7 mm anti-aircraft guns and have already acquired 80 mm mortars and rocket-propelled grenade rifles.

Although the Union Home Ministry continues to treat the Naxal menace as a largely socio-economic problem, casualty figures of securitymen have been steadily rising since 2002 and the Naxal influence is spreading across the country. When the NDA quit office in April 2004, there was Naxal presence in 125 districts and 12 states. Today the Naxalites are in 182 districts and 12 states, with “soft bases” in industrial belts around Delhi and Mumbai. In 2004, 23 CRPF battalions were deployed for anti-Naxalite operations. Today, 32 battalions have been pressed into service.

The Naxal attempt to move to the cities has also been noticed in Chhattisgarh, large tracts of which are already in their grip. Intelligence inputs received by security sources have revealed that the presence of Naxal cadres has increased in the urban areas of the state, including Raipur. Chhattisgarh Director General of Police Vishwaranjan too confirmed to The Indian Express that there has been an increase in Naxalite presence in the urban areas of Chhattisgarh. Police sources said that disclosures by several arrested ideologues, including Narayan Sanyal who is in judicial custody after his arrest from Raipur, pointed to the bid by Naxals to move towards the cities.

Despite the threat, the Centre-State response and coordination leaves much to be desired. Naxalites looted 1091 weapons during the attack on the Nayagarh police armoury in Orissa on February 16 but till date the CRPF has not been told what weapons were taken away by the extremists. Inducted into counter-operations two days later, the CRPF has so far recovered 1029 weapons, including 500 .303 rifles, 30 INSAS rifles and 20 SLRs. But there is no way to confirm whether these are the same weapons that were looted from Nayagarh.

editor@expressindia.com