RAIPUR: The Maoists who were earlier seen attacking their one-time cadres, dubbed as “traitors” for having renounced the outlawed organisation and surrendered before the police, are now targeting their family members too.
With the rebels increasingly quitting, the CPI (Maoist) apparently had left the left-wing extremists agitated as they have begun picking out the family members of former cadres in their organised village meeting or 'jan adalat' (Kangaroo Court), a new frightening trend cited to have emerged in the strife-torn Dantewada and adjoining areas in the conflict zone of Bastar.
Since July 2020, as many as 316 Maoists have surrendered under the ‘Lon Varratu’ campaign (return to your home/village) in an edgy district of Dantewada, about 450 km south of Raipur.
The Red Brigade brutally killed a father of Maoist cadre Joga, who recently surrendered at Katekalyan in Dantewada the previous week, and left pamphlets warning the other “traitors” will face the same consequences through their 'jan adalat'), if their relatives failed to keep them away from the police and ensured their return to the Maoist organisation.
Maoist woman Pande Kawasi, 21, who surrendered a couple of week ago had committed suicide under mysterious circumstances in the hostel at Dantewada.
“Preliminary inquiry suggests that she was under extreme stress battling the emotional trauma before she committed suicide. She was apparently in a dilemma that if she doesn’t agree to return to the Maoist organisation then her family will be targeted but then going back to the banned network would ruin her life. The Maoists out of sheer desperation are following such frightening tactics to create environment of terror among the surrendered cadres. For the young age woman such immense emotional turbulence evidently becomes too much to bear”, said Dr Abhishek Pallava, Dantewada district police chief.
The Maoists pamphlets issuing threats to their “traitor cadres” and the relatives been of late recovered by the police in interior tribal hamlets.