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| Major crackdown on Naxalites in J'khand, Chhattisgarh soon |
| Rajat Roy / Kolkata Sep 28, 2009, 00:57 IST |
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Tribal leader Chhatradhar Mahato, who was arrested yesterday near Lalgarh, was today remanded to police custody by a special court till October 1. Mahato, considered the public face of the Naxalites in Lalgarh, had been leading an agitation there against alleged police excesses since last November.
However, the police have failed to trap a senior Naxal leader, Koteswar Rao, alias Kishenji. The same group of policemen masquerading as a team of TV journalists tried to ‘entice’ Kishenji into a face-to-face meeting with them for an ‘interview’.
Kishenji later told some of his known acquaintances in the media that early on Saturday he had received a phone call from the same ‘TV journalists’ requesting for an interview, but he declined that offer.
It is believed that the arrest of Kishenji, instead of Mahato, could have been a major success for police in their anti-Naxalite operation in West Bengal.
However, the recent arrests of Kobad Gandhi, a member of the banned CPI (Maoist), in Delhi and Mahato is expected to boost the morale of the state and central police forces ahead of their joint offensive in Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, expected to take place in end-October.
Already 35,000 central forces have been deployed in these two states and another 20,000 would be added. The army and air force will play a more active role in providing them logistic and intelligence support.
Air force helicopters are likely to be used in flying them to operation zones. Already, during the recent Lalgarh operation, the joint force has made use of the RISAT-2 satellite launched by Isro, which is capable of capturing and transmitting detailed still pictures of the movement and hideouts of the Naxalites in the jungles of these states.
The pictures will be analysed by trained personnel of army and passed on to the joint force’s commanders. The National Technical Research Organisation will provide them with inputs coming from communication intercept.
The objective of the operation would be to destroy the main military base and important links of the Naxalites, which they had shifted from Andhra Pradesh to Chhattisgarh in recent times.
In this context, the failure to apprehend Kishenji — the self-styled chairman of the military commission of the CPI(Maoist) — is considered a major mistake committed by the police, as he is number one in the military wing.
Like Kobad Gandhi, member of an elite Parsi family and an alumnus of Doon School and Harvard University, he is also a member of the politburo.
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