THE violence perpetrated by the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) in West Bengal has reached alarming proportions, particularly in the forested region known as Jangalmahal, which spans the districts of Pashchim Medinipur, Bankura and Purulia. In October 2009, according to figures available with the State government, 21 police station limits in the region were affected by Maoist activity; in less than six months, according to an assessment paper presented at an internal security meeting held in New Delhi in February 2010, the number increased to 28.
In terms of the incidence of Maoist violence, in 2008 West Bengal ranked ninth among all States with 35 incidents. However, in 2009, the number went up to 255 and West Bengals ranking jumped to four, with Jharkhand (742 incidents), Chhattisgarh (529) and Orissa (266) ahead of it.
Even with 50 companies of Central and State security forces present in the Jangalmahal area, the Maoists have remained active. On February 15, members of the Peoples Liberation Guerilla Army (PLGA) raided an Eastern Frontier Rifles (EFR) camp at Silda in the Lalgarh area in Paschim Medinipur district and killed 24 jawans. This is the heaviest casualty the West Bengal Police have suffered so far at the hands of Maoists.
Wanton assassinations continue on a regular basis and kidnapping and extortion have become a way of life in the region. The Maoist-backed Peoples Committee against Police Atrocities (PCPA), too, has dropped its democratic mask and formed a militant wing called the Sidhu Kanu Gana Militia.
In 2009, Maoist violence claimed 158 civilian lives in the State. In fact, according to political sources, between April 2008 and April 14, 2010, more than 200 people, including police and security personnel, have been killed by Maoists. Most of the victims belonged to the ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist). Many were killed merely for being supporters of the party. The CPI(M)-led Left Front government recently sanctioned the setting up of a special force to combat the Maoist menace. A dedicated team, comprising two companies of security personnel, is now undergoing training in Orissa for that purpose, the States Director General of Police, Bhupinder Singh, told Frontline.
The State government has decided to extend aid to families affected by Maoist attacks. Each family that has lost a member will be given Rs.3 lakh. Those families otherwise affected by Maoist activities will receive Rs.1 lakh each for rehabilitation.
On April 4, Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram visited the Lalgarh region and appealed to the people not to aid or shelter Maoists. While Chidambaram was still in Lalgarh, just 30 km away, in a forest on the Paschim Medinipur-Bankura border, security forces and the Sidhu Kanu Gana Militia were engaged in a gun battle.
According to Additional Director General of Police and Director, Security, A.K. Maliwal, the assessment parameters of the State have so far been governed largely by the violence index. Anyone who has studied Maoist methods will know that violence comes at a much later stage in the movement. Maoists do not indulge in planned violence without first establishing a presence in a particular region. Authorities dealing with the Maoist menace should first deal with the parameters that indicate their presence and influence, and the security planners must rethink and redesign the strategy to contain the menace and prevent violence, Maliwal told Frontline.
Even the 28 police station areas that have been officially declared Maoist-affected are so described on the basis of the violence index and do not include police station areas in districts such as Nadia, Birbhum and Murshidabad, which, of late, have witnessed Maoist attacks. In the course of one year, Birbhum district saw two blasts on railway tracks and a blast directed at a telephone tower, apart from stray killings. This can be seen as an indication of a spread in the Maoists area of influence, said a senior police officer. According to DGP Bhupinder Singh, this could be a diversionary tactic. When their [Maoists] core area of operation is under pressure, they influence the peripheral areas and other places, perhaps to reduce the intensity of operations against them in the core area, he told Frontline.
The arrest of senior Maoist leader Venkatesh Reddy alias Telugu Deepak on March 2 in Kolkata was a shot in the arm for the police. Originally from Andhra Pradesh, Deepak has been one of the top Maoist militant operatives in West Bengal for the past 10 years. He is believed to be the chief of the State Militiary Commission of the Maoists in West Bengal and one of the masterminds behind the major attacks in recent times in the State, including the massacre at the EFR camp. According to reports, Deepak, an explosives expert, was also behind the attack on West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjees convoy at Salboni near the Jangalmahal area in November 2008 an event that proved to be a turning point in the recent history of the Maoist upsurge in the State.
The police, acting on a tip-off, monitored Deepaks movements from the Lalgarh area to Kolkata. Arriving in the city by train from Jhargram, he boarded a bus from Howrah station to Sarsuna in Behala, in south Kolkata, where he was to meet a contact. The police lay in wait for him there and arrested him as soon as he alighted from the bus.
Deepaks arrest is undoubtedly a huge blow to the Maoist movement in the State. Apart from being a key aide to Koteswar Rao alias Kishenji, the CPI (Maoist) Politburo member in charge of militant operations in West Bengal, Orissa and Chhattisgarh, Deepak was a strategist and a crucial link between mainstream politicians and the Maoists. One of his main functions was to extend the Maoist base in the State and also existing networks. In West Bengal alone, Deepak has over 40 criminal cases against him, and he is also a wanted man in Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.
In the course of police interrogation, Deepak is said to have revealed that during the violent uprising in Nandigram in Purba Medinipur district over a proposed chemical hub, the Trinamool Congress provided the Maoists arms and the Maoists, in turn, trained the partys supporters. The Maoists had used the Trinamool Congress to gain a foothold in Nandigram and planned to create a corridor linking Jangalmahal with Nandigram, he is said to have told his interrogators.
Subsequently, the Trinamool Congress increasing discomfort over being associated with the Maoists and the almost overnight change in its attitude towards the Maoists led to a sudden reversal in the ties between the two parties. However, though Trinamool Congress supremo and Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee has been open of late in her condemnation of the Maoists, not all within her party toe her line. The Trinamool Congress MP from Jadavpur, Kabir Suman, a popular singer, continues to object to the armed operations against the Maoists and has even released an album in honour of Chhatradhar Mahato, the arrested convener of the PCPA.
Both the Trinamool Congress and the Maoists seem to have common causes and issues. In 2007, the two fought shoulder to shoulder in Nandigram; in 2008, they supported each other in Singur, where the violent agitation by the Trinamool Congress forced Tata Motors to shift its prestigious small car project out of the State; in 2009, during the early days of the Lalgarh movement, the Trinamool Congress extended its full support to the PCPA; lastly, both parties have planned agitations, albeit separately, at Haripur in Purba Medinipur district, where the setting up of a nuclear reactor is under consideration.
Deepak also reportedly expressed his doubts about the Maoist movement being able to withstand a full onslaught of the security forces once inter-State operations against them gathered momentum. This was validated by the setback the Maoists suffered in a gun battle on March 25 in a forest at Lakhanpur near the Lalgarh area, in which many of the cadre were believed to have been killed and top leaders, including Kishenji, were believed to have been wounded. According to intelligence sources, that was possibly why Kishenji and other local Maoist leaders, including leaders of the PCPA, had expressed an interest in holding talks with the State, provided the latter withdrew its anti-Maoist operations.
However, not all are convinced of the Maoists intentions. Said Maliwal: Violence is central to their ideology and programme. Offering to sit for conditional talks could well be a part of their tactics to buy time or divert the attention of the state.
Venkitesh RamakrishnanTHE conflicting perspectives of State governments and the Union Home Ministry with regard to the anti-Maoist operations are best exemplified in Jharkhand and Bihar, particularly in the former. The differences came into sharp focus in the past six months when the Centre sought to go ahead with a surge of security forces in select areas to corner the Maoists.
When the Union Home Ministry launched the initiative in end-2009, within the Central security establishment there were expectations of greater cooperation from the political players and the administrative machinery in the two States and of more tangible successes as a result. A senior Home Ministry official had at that time summed up the expectations thus: From what was a one-sided affair, we have moved to a see-saw battle now. It still cannot be said that the balance of power is in our favour, but it would not be out of place to claim that the Maoists are a bit rattled.
Around six months later, this senior official and others at the Centre and in the two States had nothing to say about the balance of power changing in favour of the security forces. On the other hand, on April 13, D.K. Pandey, Inspector General of Police (Operations) in Jharkhand, indicated that the Maoists had penetrated deeper into the State administration. His statement followed the detection of an explosives-laden container weighing 45 kg buried under a metalled road near the State capital, Ranchi. The discovery was made during a joint operation by the State police and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF). The Maoists could have activated the explosives, which could have shattered even heavy vehicles, whenever they wanted.
The most striking thing about the discovery, Pandey said, was that the container had been slipped in when the road was being laid. Obviously, the Maoists had enough influence over the contractor who built the road to get something like this done, he said. The contractor is in custody and is being investigated for negligence and connivance. Pandey added that a number of contractors were facing investigation for similar recovery of explosives.
This new dimension in the Maoists operations pointed to their growing reach in Jharkhand. It is common knowledge in political and administrative circles that Maoists control vital functions, including law and order maintenance and grass-roots level administration, in large parts of the 24 districts in the State. Informal estimates put at 20 the number of districts under Maoist control. Six months ago, there was hope that this situation could be altered, at least marginally. But that has not happened and, instead, the Maoists seem to have dug in even deeper, said a senior Home Ministry official.
Besides the superior planning and military skills that the Maoists have reportedly displayed in the past few months, the single-most important reason identified for the recent setbacks by large sections of the bureaucracy and the security establishment is the lack of political will to tackle the Maoists.
Some of the comments of Jharkhand Chief Minister Shibu Soren underline this perception. A few days after taking over as Chief Minister in December 2009, Soren described the Maoists as his brothers and asserted that the anti-Maoist operations were being carried out without his consent. He retracted the statement later, but the overwhelming view in political and administrative circles is that Sorens party, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), came up with a surprisingly good performance in the Assembly elections essentially on the strength of an understanding with the Maoists. The Maoists as brothers line was a natural follow-up of this understanding, they say. The connection between the Maoists and politicians is not new.
In 2007, an arrested CPI (Maoist) leader, Balswarup Yadav alias Sridhar Ji, stated that several members of Parliament and the Legislative Assemblies of Jharkhand and Bihar, as well as top-level leaders of many political parties, were in regular contact with the leadership and cadre of the CPI (Maoist) for help to advance their political and personal interests, including in electoral battles. The Maoists, Sridhar Ji said, obliged politicians selectively by striking deals with them. The deals were financial, political or relating to development in a particular part of the State.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, too, has been critical of the Central governments approach to anti-Maoist operations. He believes that political and developmental work rather than military initiatives ought to be the priority in dealing with the Maoist issue. We also have to analyse why the problem has come up. Focusing on military operations alone, without doing this analysis, will only help the growth of Maoists, he said in the wake of the Dantewada massacre. He added that the Union Home Minister should talk less and work more. He was critical of Home Secretary G.K. Pillais statement that Bihar was going soft on the Maoists since the Assembly elections were scheduled later this year. However, many political observers believe that Pillais remark has immense merit. Everybody knows the Jharkhand phenomenon of collusion between politicians and Maoists exists in Bihar, too, perhaps to a lesser degree, said a senior politician of Nitish Kumars own party, the Janata Dal (United).
The net result of all this has been the growing Maoist influence in all walks of life and the increasing number of assaults on security forces. According to government officials serving in different districts of Jharkhand, the Maoists enjoy a lot of popular support in large parts of rural Jharkhand, particularly among the tribal people in East Singhbhum.
According to Niyaz Ahamed, Jharkhands DGP, Maoist presence has increased, particularly in the densely forested hill ranges of Chakulia, Bahragora, Ghatshila and Dalma on the Jharkhand-West Bengal border. This has apparently strengthened the hands of the Maoists in the so-called Red Corridor. There is a view within the security establishment in Jharkhand that this is the most tangible result of the anti-Maoist operations of the past six months. Clearly, unless the political leadership shows greater resolve and improves coordination between the States and the Centre, the anti-Maoist operations in Jharkhand and Bihar will continue to remain a story of defeats.
Prafulla Das in BhubaneswarORISSA now stands at a critical juncture in its ongoing battle against the Maoists. Strong opposition to Operation Green Hunt from the Left extremists has left the Naveen Patnaik government in a tight spot.
The killing of 11 jawans of the Special Operations Group (SOG) of the State police in a landmine blast on the Govindpali ghat road in Koraput district on April 4, just two days before 78 CRPF men were killed in Dantewada in Chhattisgarh, has made things difficult for the authorities who were readying for a massive anti-Maoist operation.
In the wee hours of March 24, Maoists killed three policemen inside the Ambajhari forest in Gajapati district.
In a bid to thwart any operation against them, the Maoists continue to block major roads in the Narayanpatna area of Koraput and damage roads and culverts. The extremists have also put up banners demanding the withdrawal of the Central forces from the region. Blocking roads with felled trees is a common method the Maoists adopt to prevent the movement of police teams in Malkangiri district, which shares borders with Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.
It is not the Maoists alone who oppose Operation Green Hunt. Over 5,000 tribal people from the areas of Malkangiri district where the Maoists have a strong presence staged a demonstration outside the collectorate in the district headquarters town of Malkangiri on April 2 against the operation.
These people, who gathered under the banner of the Konda Reddy Unnayana Sangha, demanded that basic amenities such as education, health care, road connection and electricity be provided in their areas. The administration, which has neglected the forest areas of the district for decades, is now finding it difficult to implement development programmes fearing Maoist attacks.
Maoists have not only targeted security personnel deployed in the area from time to time but also killed village heads, small traders and political activists at frequent intervals, branding them as police informers. More than 20 people have been killed in Malkangiri district in the past six years.
The police, however, deny the Maoist claim. About 90 per cent of the people killed by Maoists had no known links with the police, said Sanjeev Marik, Inspector General of Police (Operations).
The Maoists are killing innocent villagers after branding them as police informers with the sole aim of terrorising the local people in order to strengthen their base, said Marik.
Further, the Maoists have been damaging infrastructure such as school and government buildings in an apparent move to deprive the security personnel of a place to camp. Many such attacks have taken place in Sundergarh in recent months.
Mobile-phone towers have been targeted in the southern districts of Gajapati, Koraput, Rayagada and Malkangiri for the past several months. Railway tracks have been damaged on days when bandhs were called, in Sundergarh district and elsewhere.
Marik, who sees the Maoist issue as a complicated problem, says that the Maoists adopted double standards with regard to development work in the backward regions. It is unfortunate that they are blowing up school buildings and other infrastructure while they themselves were blaming the administration for lack of development work.
The Maoists are a bunch of criminals who have no respect for democracy and the laws of the land. They are out to block development, Marik added.
The Maoists, who have a strong presence in 17 of the 30 districts, killed 32 policemen and 28 civilians in 266 incidents reported in the State in 2009. Counter-operations by security forces have resulted in the arrest of 182 Maoists, neutralisation of 11, and the surrender of eight during the year.
The State government is now taking on the Maoist challenge with the help of four CRPF battalions and five battalions of the Border Security Force. More battalions of Central forces have been sought.
The government has focussed on enhancing the capabilities of the State police by raising the SOG, the Special Intelligence Group, four special security battalions, five India Reserve battalions, and the Orissa Special Security Force.
Sources in the police claimed that the police had been successful in containing the Maoist menace to some extent in Keonjhar, Jajpur, Sambalpur and Mayurbhanj. Efforts were on to improve the situation in Sundergarh.
The authorities, however, admit that the situation was out of control in the southern districts, where people were fleeing their homes. Opposition parties have blamed Naveen Patnaik for his governments failure to contain the Maoists who appear to be gaining strength steadily. Bharatiya Janata Party State unit president Jual Oram even alleged that the ruling Biju Janata Dal was hand in glove with the extremists. The Chief Minister, however, said he would deal with them with a firm hand. Patnaik has been holding the Home portfolio since 2000, and his tenure has seen the maximum growth of the Maoist menace. In a bid to boost the morale of the police force, the State government has announced that the families of those killed in the landmine blast would be provided homestead land apart from a compensation package.
But the Maoists have issued fresh threats that attacks such as the ones carried out at Govindpali and Dantewada would be repeated if the State and Central governments did not stop Operation Green Hunt.
Top police officiers are tight-lipped about their new strategy.
Venkitesh RamakrishnanBASICALLY, you have to understand that if you squeeze, you also have to contain. If you only squeeze, they will simply squeeze out or overflow into other areas, said Ajai Sahni, executive director of the Delhi-based Institute of Conflict Management and editor of South Asia Intelligence Review, while evaluating the security initiatives launched by the Union Home Ministry in late 2009 to quell the Maoist challenge. The experience of Uttar Pradesh in the past six months in terms of Maoist activity has, by and large, vindicated this observation. Security officials of the State as well as sources in the CPI (Maoist) point out that there has been an escalation in the activities of the Left-wing Extremist Group (LWG) during the period.
According to senior security officials, the most striking aspect of the recent activities of Maoists in Uttar Pradesh is the penetration of urban and semi-urban areas such as Allahabad, Varanasi, Kanpur, Lucknow and Gorakhpur. Earlier, Maoist activities in the State were mainly concentrated in the three eastern districts of Mirzapur, Sonbhadra and Chandauli, which are contiguous with Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Bihar, States where the CPI (Maoist) has stronger roots.
Although Uttar Pradesh has not witnessed any major extremist assaults in the period under review, security agencies and CPI (Maoist) sources say that the Maoists have increased their organisational activities, with many top leaders touring different parts of the State. The security agencies claim to have apprehended some of these senior leaders and their accomplices. In the process, there have also been charges about police high-handedness, including wrongful arrests and harassment of innocent people on the charge of having Maoist connections.
A striking case has been the arrest of Seema Azad, editor of the Allahabad-based magazine Dastak and an activist of the Peoples Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL). Seema Azad was arrested by the Special Task Force (STF) of the State police at the Allahabad railway station when she was returning after attending the Delhi Book Fair in February along with her husband, Vishwa Vijaya Azad, and a friend, Asha. Many prominent personalities, including the Magsasay Award-winning social activist Sandeep Pandey, protested against the arrest. The STF and other security agencies, however, justified the arrest, asserting that Seema Azad and her husband had Maoist connections.
The security agencies also claim to have arrested a clutch of senior leaders of the CPI (Maoist), including its central committee members Balraj alias B.R. alias Arvind, head of the north regional bureau (NRB), and Banshidhar alias Chintan Da. The NRB oversees the Maoist movement in Uttar Pradesh, Uttar (north) Bihar and Uttarakhand (termed 3U in the Maoist organisational structure) as also in Delhi, Haryana and Punjab. Another prize catch, according to the State Home Department, is Ram Sajivan Kushwaha alias Guruji, a sub-zonal commander of the CPI (Maoist), who was apparently arrested in the Kon area of Sonbhadra district on April 5, a day before the Dantewada attack.
A senior State police officer was of the view that these arrests and detentions had, in all probability, helped prevent a major Maoist strike in Uttar Pradesh.
The last major extremist attack was in November 2004, when a landmine blast caused the death of 18 personnel of the Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC). The attack took place in the Hinaut Ghat area under the Naugarh police station in Chandauli district. The Maoists also shot dead in 2003 Padma Bhushan Saran Shah, the erstwhile king of Vijayagarh state of Sonbhadra. More recently, in December 2009, the Maoists beheaded Shiv Prakash, 28, of Sonbhadra after a peoples court branded him a police informer. It was in the aftermath of this incident that the State police and the STF made the spate of arrests.
According to a senior Indian Police Service officer, despite these arrests and detentions, the jungle areas of Nagwa, Chatara, Chopan and Kon in eastern Uttar Pradesh have a sizable presence of Maoists. These forest areas are considered to be safe havens for the Maoist leaders, who move from their bases in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa and Bihar when the situation becomes difficult there. The police are apparently following a strategy that aims at preventing the entry of these leaders into Uttar Pradesh. The police claim to have evolved a system of community policing involving local tribal people to attain this objective.
Senior police officiers, including G.P. Karamveer Singh, DGP, have stated that this has helped in weakening the Maoist network in the area. In the context of the recent developments, the State government has decided to raise a special commando force with approximately 400 personnel trained in jungle warfare.
Karamveer Singh told Frontline that the government had decided to launch a comprehensive development scheme in the districts seriously threatened by Maoists. One of the proposed schemes is the Integrated Tribal Development Programme (ITDP), which is to be piloted in Sonbhadra district. The programme will ensure that the district gets not only proper infrastructure but also welfare schemes for its overall development.
While senior officials make these claims, social activists like Sandeep Pandey point out that the Mayawati governments real intention is to use the crackdown as well as the so-called development programmes to facilitate land-grabbing by big corporate firms, especially in the tribal belts of the State. Many big players, including international corporate firms, have announced plans to develop infrastructure projects for tourism and other industries.
The anti-Maoist crackdown is being used to suppress and silence genuine social activists in the State, Varanasi-based Human Rights activist Lenin Raghuvanshi told Frontline. He warned that such indiscriminate action would only help aggravate social tension.
Anupama KatakamGUJARAT seemed to be a State untouched by the naxalite movement until the arrest of eight people in Surat in early April. Now a serious debate is on about whether the State, particularly the Dangs in the southern region, is a hotbed of naxalism.
Adivasi organisations working in the Dangs, a predominantly tribal belt, dismiss such fears. But the police suspect that the national agenda of naxalites is to target and mobilise support in the area. The conditions in the Dangs are no different from those obtaining in other areas with naxalite activity. There are few livelihood options as traditional forest agriculture now comes under the Forest Department; there is a lack of civic amenities; and basic services such as education and health care are absolutely unavailable. Given Gujarats development in the industrial and agricultural sectors, the backwardness of the region appears stark. People in the Dangs have been waging a relentless struggle to secure their rights over the forests.
It really wouldnt be a surprise if they turned to a more militant body to help them, says a volunteer with a non-governmental organisation.
Activists such as the linguist Ganesh Devy and Father Xavier Manjooran, who is an active member of the Adivasi Lok Sangharsh Samiti, maintain that it is wrong to dub the people of the Dangs as naxalite or Maoists just because they are Adivasis. They say that these people have worked against recruitment by naxalites as they believe any form of militancy would hinder their legitimate fight for forest rights.
In a crackdown on suspected naxalite activities in the State, the police arrested Niranjan Mahapatra from Pandesara in Surat; K.N. Singh from Bhavnagar; Ramu Pawar from Mumbai; Avinash Kulkarni, Bharat Pawar and Silat Pawar from the Dangs; Maka Choudhary from Madhvi; Jeram Goswami from Songadh; and Satyam Rao from Andhra Pradesh. The police claimed that these men belonged to the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Janshakti and that there was adequate information to prove that they were distributing Maoist literature and attempting to recruit people to naxalism. An informed source said Ramu Pawar was being tracked for his naxalite connections.
While the Gujarat Police believe the arrests might unravel the extent of the naxalite movement in the State, people like Fr Xavier dismiss the theory as nonsense. Speaking to Frontline from the Dangs, he said: Avinash and Bharat belong to the Adivasi Sanghatana. They have never participated in any anti-national activities or for that matter even encouraged violence in any of their speeches.
The police have used the naxalite strikes in other parts of the country as an excuse to pick up Avinash and Bharat because they were fighting for forest rights under the Forest Rights Act, Fr Xavier said. Avinash had been putting a lot of pressure on the Forest Department to find a just solution to the issues confronting the Adivasis. Moreover, the CPI(M-L) Janshakti is not a banned organisation.
Of course, there is a leaning towards the Left in this region. The CPI (M-L) Janshakti does a lot of work. But you cannot brand it as Maoist or naxalite just because of that. Does it mean anyone who has Left leanings is a naxalite? says Fr Xavier. The situation obtaining in Gujarat is different from other States. Pockets such as the Dangs are indeed neglected, but the rest of the State is mostly dominated by the middle class and is concerned with business and money. It would be hard for this kind of a movement to exist in such a State. Where would they raise funds from? Who would sympathise with them? he asks.
The terms Maoist and naxalite are used interchangeably without understanding their connotation, Ganesh Devy said at a public meeting at Zankhav after the arrests. The State police is perhaps not aware that the two words have absolutely different meanings. They cannot brand just anyone a naxalite or a Maoist. Gujarat is far from these. But if the tribal people are labelled naxalite and exploitation keeps happening in the form of arrests, soon it will bring violence to these areas, he warned.
The pressing issue in the Dangs is the implementation of the Forest Rights Act, 2006. The Act came as a result of a protracted struggle by the tribal communities to assert their rights over forest land. Adivasi organisations say that the Act provides for the restitution of deprived forest rights across India, including both individual rights to cultivated land in the forest area and community rights over common property resources.
Environmentalists point out that if the Act is implemented, it will lead to bigger problems. For instance, access to the forests may lead to middlemen exploiting Adivasis for timber.
Meanwhile, the arrest of Surya Devra Prabhakar by the Mumbai Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) in April could provide some clues on whether naxalites are trying to establish a network in Gujarat. The ATS claims that Prabhakar, who is fluent in Gujarati, has travelled widely in Gujarat for the past eight years spreading the Maoist ideology. They seized banned literature, apparently meant for distribution, from him. However, Prabhakar said he had nothing to do with the naxalite movement and he had retired from it three years ago. His is perhaps one of those arrests made to show that the police are on top of things.
Whether Gujarat is becoming an extension of the red corridor or not, it seems to be a perfect target for the Maoists.
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