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Police in Andhra Pradesh on alert after PWG attacks businesses

Police were on high alert in Andhra Pradesh after a left-wing rebel group carried out a string of attacks on government property and businesses, officials said on Saturday.

Late on Friday, extremists belonging to the outlawed Peoples War Group blew up a court building in the state's Adilabad district, about 325 km north of the state capital Hyderabad.

On Thursday, the rebels blasted a milk chilling plant run by the family of Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu and a granite factory owned by Minister of State for Defence U V Krishnam Raju.

The same night, the rebels also blasted a coffee plant belonging to India's second largest business conglomerate, the Tata group, causing an estimated loss Rs 50 million.

The PWG, which has in the past targeted rich landowners and state government facilities, in October bombed a plant belonging to Atlanta-based soft-drinks giant Coca-Cola and threatened more attacks on multinationals operating in the state.

The rebels, known locally as Naxalites after the birth of their movement in the eastern town of Naxalbari, warned in a statement of more attacks to protest against what they called government repression.

The PWG says hundreds of its cadres and sympathisers have been killed by the police in the last few years.

Police said they were on high alert across the state and senior officials were discussing measures to curb the violence.

A police spokesman said the rebel group had stepped up its attacks to observe "Martyrs' day" which commemorates the deaths of its supporters in clashes with the police.

"December 2 is an important day for the PWG. It was on this day two years ago that three of their top leaders were killed in an encounter with police," he said.

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