Naxals stamp authority in MP village, beat up informer's kin

Naxals stamp authority in MP village, beat up informer's kin
YOGESH VAJPEYI

BHOPAL, FEB 21

Less than 24 hours after blowing up the police vehicle carrying 22 Madhya Pradesh policemen near Narainpur Police Station of Bastar, Naxalites raided the village of the police informer nearby, beat up his family and set ablaze three houses to establish their writ in the area.

The incident, reported to Narainpur police station by the wife of informer Lakhmu _ who accompanied the police party as their guide and died with it _ on Monday morning, has struck terror among local residents.

It has also put a question mark over the State Home Minister's claim that the killers would be nabbed soon as additional Special Armed Forces units had been sent to the area to give more teeth to anti-Naxalite operations.

While the State's police establishment was at a loss to explain how the police party walked into the trap so easily, Chief Minister Digvijay Singh on Tuesday told the Assembly that he intended to bring special legislation to check Naxalites.

He also said police inNaxalite-dominated areas would get special vehicles equipped with mine-detection devices.

Only three days before the mine blast, another police party had been similarly sent to nab Naxalites in Kandhai and Airasgun villages. At that time, the policemen were cautious enough to look for a landmine, found it and neutralised it, sources in the Narainpur police confirmed.

They feel Naxalites suspected that Lakhmoo _ whose services they had enlisted six months back _ had become a police informer, and deliberately fed him with wrong information so that they could lay a trap for the policemen.

The swiftness with which they raided the informer's village after the landmine blast shows that Naxalites are well-connected, say officials with experience in anti-Naxalite operations.

According to Lakhmu's wife, over 200 Naxalites, accompanied by an armed PWG dalam, raided her village Khalmanar after midnight past Sunday. They rounded up all the residents of the village, 20 km from Narainpur policestation, and conducted a swift court martial.

All the relatives of the suspected informer _ identified as Lakhmu _ were tied and beaten up. The Naxalites then set ablaze three houses belonging to Lakhmu and his brothers, and went away after warning them to leave the village within three days.

A senior police official said Lakhmu's wife and relatives are so frightened that they have refused to return to their village despite repeated assurances of adequate protection. ``I can't blame them. For the Naxalites know when and where to strike while we policemen are groping in the dark,'' he said.

The fact that Naxalites have killed over 122 policemen in mineblasts during the last 10 years alone is discouraging enough. But the Naxal terror assumes a more sinister dimension for the police posted in the Bastar division, which has accounted for 12 landmine blasts and 86 police deaths during the period. Home Minister Patel admits that the Narainpur mineblast has badly shattered the morale of the statepolice.