Mahendra Kumawat has a lifetime experience of dealing with Maoists, terrorists and other militancy. He explains why the fight against the Maoists will be a long and arduous one.
The Naxalite killed in an encounter with police in Karnataka carried a reward of Rs 3 lakh on his head, it was revealed on Tuesday, as combing operations against the Ultras continued in the state.
His spine, his heart, his pancreas -- one by one, all his organs have weakened, given the lack of medical treatment in jail, where he is kept in the notorious Anda cell. Continuous pain, frequent fainting spells, urinary problems, have all become part of his life.
2 senior commandos of Greyhounds were injured in the encounter that occurred during a routine combing operation.
'It is time to use the Indian military's decades-long expertise in fighting insurgency successfully,' advocates Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
Ten people including three police commandos were killed on Thursday in two separate attacks by Maoists in Maharashtra and Bihar. The three commandos, who were jawans of C-60 Commando Force, lost their lives in a landmine blast triggered by Maoists in a forest area in Gadchiroli on Maharashtra border adjoining Chhattisgarh in the first major attack in the area in several months, local police control room sources said.
'That is how our machinery operates and sees every prisoner.'
The Indian Mujahideen follows the same pattern as its creator, Lashkar-e-Tayiba.
Helicopters of either MI-17 series or of equivalent capability, which can fly both at day and night, will be deployed in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, possibly before the end of the year.
Even as search operation continues for the 35 missing Greyhound commandos on the Andhra Pradesh-Orissa border for the third consecutive day, police officials have also started apprehending that at least some of the missing persons have been taken hostage by the Maoists after attacking the launch in Machkund reservoir on Sunday.
Six choppers and 13 divers were scouring the reservoir to trace the 35 men of the elite commando force who went missing after Naxals attacked them with grenades and fired at them indiscriminately when they were returning in a motor boat from Janabai after a combing operation on the Orissa-Andhra Pradesh border on June 28. The jawans retaliated but the motor boat, in the wake of heavy exchange of fire, capsized in the reservoir forcing the Greyhounds to jump into the water.
HRW said that all parties in the Chhattisgarh conflict have used children in armed operations. The Naxalites, a Maoist armed group, admitted that it is their official practice to recruit children above age 16 in their forces, and they have used children as young as 12 in armed operations.
This is the first time in the history of Jharkhand that it is facing such a severe cyclonic storm.
A jawan of the Special Task Force was killed and two others were injured when Maoists fired at them in Bihar's Jamui district in the wee hours of Friday.
The CRPF gave this response while refusing to share its inquiry report into the incident with an RTI applicant.
Tarun Vijay, MP, salutes the General whom he adored as a great friend.
Chhattisgarh government will set up an armed battalion of women to deal with the law and order situation and deploy it in the naxal-infested areas if needed.
A CRPF commando was killed in an encounter with Naxals in the jungles of Giridih district of Jharkhand on Friday.
The National Investigation Agency probing the Bodh Gaya attack has ruled out a Naxalite or Hindu extremist link and states that everything now goes on to show that it was either an outsourced group of the Indian Mujahideen or the outfit itself which could have carried out the blasts.
Not ruling out the violation of Standard Operating Procedures when such a huge movement of central forces is taking place in the troubled state, officials requesting anonymity said a clear picture on loopholes, if any, will be known after a thorough probe.
The government said on Wednesday that the 62nd Battalion, which lost 75 of its personnel during the bloody encounter with Naxals in Dantewada last month, was not trained by the army.
Six Naxals, including a woman cadre, and a jawan of the Central Reserve Police Force were killed on Monday after a night-long encounter with the paramilitary force in the district of West Bengal.
'These charges of the prosecution will fall to the ground and I am 100 per cent sure of that.'
Five more bodies of personnel belonging to the elite anti-Naxal force Commando Battalion for Resolute Action have been recovered from the Dantewada Forests in Chattisgarh.
Notwithstanding the negative response of Maoists to its peace offers, the government is optimistic that the Left extremists would agree to talks once they "feel the heat" of the ongoing security operations.
With coordination issues between central and state forces being raised in the wake of the Dantewada massacre, the Central Reserve Police Force on Thursday said it is conducting anti-Maoist operations in close consulation with the Chhattisgarh police and a joint offensive will be carried out.
He survived the latest Naxal ambush on the Central Reserve Police Force in Chhattisgarh and got injured but has not lost his nerve and is raring to return to the jungles to avenge the death of his fellow security men.
Raising pitch to suspend operation Green Hunt, Naxal sympathiser and Telegu poet Varavara Rao on Sunday dubbed Maoist leader Kishenji's encounter as a "political murder".
With the Naxals facing the heat of an imminent concerted operation by the security forces, a top Maoist leader on Thursday said the ultras were ready for talks 'if there was ceasefire on both sides' and withdrawal of the paramilitary forces deployed in the Naxal-hit states.
A huge haul of explosives, including 15 Improvised Explosive Devices and three pressure bombs, were on Thursday recovered by security forces from separate places averting a massive strike in the Naxal-hit Bastar Parliamentary seat, where about 15 per cent of the electorate cast their votes in the initial hours of polling.
"The entire edifice of security of the PM, in a federal structure like ours, stands on the strong bond of mutual trust and confidence between state police and the SPG. State police are fully responsible for ensuring a secure route for the PM's travel," former NSG Director General Sudeep Lakhtakia said.
Naval divers were pressed into operation to look for 36 personnel of an elite anti-naxal Force, who were feared drowned in a reservoir at the Andhra Pradesh-Orissa border, where their launch sunk after being fired upon by Maoists.Reports said that three more personnel of a 64-member strong squad of Andhra Pradesh's elite Greyhound Force swam to the banks with injuries, official sources said, adding that they were immediately air-lifted to Bhuwaneswar for treatment.
The Communist Party of India - Maoist, which had claimed responsibility for the May 25 attack that left many Chhattisgarh Congress leaders dead, on Thursday denied that the incident had any political link.
A day after the RBI put in public domain a draft scheme of merger of Lakshmi Vilas Bank (LVB) with subsidiary of Singapore-based DBS, public sector banks' officer union AIBOC on Wednesday said the amalgamation is not in the national interest and demanded the consolidation with any PSB. The proposed amalgamation of the cash-strapped LVB with DBS Bank India seems to be a ploy to provide entry of foreign banks into the country in a big way, All India Bank Officers' Confederation (AIBOC) president Sunil Kumar said. The Indian banking sector provides huge opportunity for growth, so the foreign banks have been looking at inorganic route to expand their presence for long, he said.
Jairam upset state health services absent in Naxal-hit regions.
Incessant rains, and not Maoists, is the major hurdle facing the security forces who have launched a massive search operation in the Nallamalla forests in Andhra Pradesh, where Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy's helicopter went missing this morning, Andhra Pradesh police sources involved in the search operations have said.
The next year is likely to pose a bigger challenge to the counter-insurgency operation in Chhattisgarh where the Communist Party of India-Maoist is planning to observe its 10th year of foundation and is being feared to unite all Naxal groups in the country to carry out major 'events'.
The move is part of recommendations made by a task force on the use of space technology in improving border management which have been accepted by Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh.
