16 Maoists surrender in Chhattisgarh

Sixteen Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-M) cadres have surrendered in Chhattisgarh's Bastar District.

The 16 Maoists, including a woman, had a bounty of rupees one lakh on their heads.

Inspector General (IG), Bastar, S.R.P. Kalluri said, "Sixteen Maoists have given up on their ideology and adopted the democratic mindset. These surrenders by Maoists started five months back. In these five months, in entire Bastar division, 313 Maoists have adopted the democratic mindset. Because of this, we are getting a lot of help in our combing operations."

During the ceremony, the Maoists were given monetary encouragement of Rupees 5,000.

Kalluri also said that due to the increasing number of surrenders, the casualties had also come down. In the last five months, only nine casualties were reported in contrast to 36 in months prior to these five months.

Ten Maoists had surrendered while six were arrested by the paramilitary force in Chhattisgarh, earlier on Saturday.

All the Maoists who surrendered alleged that they were subjected to exploitation and they lived under a constant threat. All of them agreed in unison that Maoism should be uprooted in Bastar.

Recently, the Director General of Central Reserve Police Force, Dilip Trivedi, had said that the reason behind these surrenders was that the top management of the LWE (Left Wing Extremism) was now old and no longer capable of keeping the herd together.

The rebels have operated for decades across a wide swath of central and eastern India, and grew in strength during recent times in areas where poor, tribal villagers came into conflict with mining companies seeking resources for industrialisation.

Maoists seek the violent overthrow of the Indian state but have so far not managed to spread significantly into urban areas.

They have killed police and politicians and targeted government buildings and railway tracks in an insurgency that has killed thousands since the 1960s.