Two women were killed in separate incidents in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur district recently, allegedly by Maoists who accused them of being police informers. A woman named, YalamSukra, 40, from Lodedh village under Madded police station limits, was abducted by a group of Maoists. They reportedly took her to a jungle hilltop, three kilometres away, and killed her by slitting her throat.
In another incident, 45-year-old LaxmiPadam, an anganwadi worker from Timapur village, was dragged out of her home in front of her family and strangled to death. The Maoists, who reportedly belonged to the same area committee, accused her of being a police informer.
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These killings bring the total number of Maoist-related deaths in Bijapur to five in just one week. The Bastar region, which includes Bijapur, has seen significant violence this year, with at least 64 civilians, 210 Maoists, and 18 security personnel killed so far. The casualty figures show that the insurgency is alive and kicking in tribal areas of Chattisgarh.
The security forces have claimed major success against the insurgents by inflicting large amount of casualties in Bastar division in last 11 months. As many as 207 Maoists have been killed between December 2023 and November 22, 2024—an unprecedented number considering only 20 had been brought down in all of 2023. There have been 13 major operations in this period, with success too coming in big chunks. On October 4, for instance, 31 alleged Maoists died in a firefight in the forests bordering the Narayanpur and Dantewada districts, the highest in a single operation in the history of the insurgency in Chhattisgarh.
But will an increase in troops do the wonder that many hope it can achieve? If history is to testify, a similar surge in other insurgencies have achieved nothing much. As operations intensify in Bastar, there are reports of civilian victims in cross-firing and ‘encounter’ deaths.
The Maoist insurgents are equally big threat to internal security, along with militants in Kashmir and North-East. According to the Home Ministry, over 3,000 people have been killed in the Maoist conflict since 2008.
The Maoists have committed numerous serious abuses, such as targeted killings of police, political figures, and landlords. In some cases the Maoists bring alleged “enemies” before their self-declared janadalat, or people’s court, where the Maoists conduct public show trials. Penalties are harsh: suspected informers are beheaded or shot. The Maoists have also abducted public officials and ordinary villagers.
According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, the country has witnessed 5,513nincidents of killing, 4,076 civilians have been killed, 2,692 security forces and 4,603 Maoists. The good news is since 2015, civilian deaths have reduced considerably in comparison to deaths of insurgents. But the targeted killings against civilians are still happening and unless this is stopped totally, the government will not be able claim 100 percent success in eliminating Maoist menace.
Even the killings of Maoists won’t end the problem as there are many misguided and disgruntled youngsters who join Maoism to avenge atrocities against them done by government agencies, politicians and even big mining companies who are being gifted forest lands by governments for mining purposes. People are getting displaced. Socio-economic backwardness still hurts the Maoist-hit areas.
Every time an innocent civilian is harmed, the seeds are sown for sense of revenge, which will continue to act as fodder for Maoists, who are right now facing huge attrition due to rising casualties.
While a lot of development activities have been initiated by the Centre and respective State governments, lot more has to be done to provide socio-economic security to the local population, who are mainly tribals and live in extreme poverty. While guns are needed to silence the Maoists and stop them from killing civilians, but inadequate human development would mean resurgence of insurgency.
This is the same problem with militancy. Lack of holistic development, corruption, atrocities against innocent civilians – all add up to the anger against government and leads to the victims picking up the gun. These people are then labelled as terrorists and the security forces are engaged to eliminate them.
This vicious cycle has to be stopped. Because, at the end of it, it is our own citizens who are getting killed – be it the civilians, security forces or the insurgents.
The only way to end violence is to sway people away from violence by providing them with good governance, which entails covering them with a fool-proof and impregnable socio-economic security net.
