Volume 6, No. 6, June 2005

The Congress government that had replaced nine years of misrule by the TDP headed by Chandrababu Naidu, has proved itself to be no less authoritarian, anti-people and a servant of the landlords-comprador bureaucratic bourgeois-imperialist combine. The record of the past one year of YSR rule in AP shows how its performance is no different from that of the predecessor in every sphere of activity. In this article we only focus on its repressive polices.

In the four months since the YSR government began fake encounters and stepped up its brutal offensive on the revolutionaries, the violence and counter-violence had escalated rapidly and this time on a far greater scale than during the same period last year when the TDP was in power.

The YSR govt decided to recruit 3000 police and another 3000 home guards immediately besides setting up two India Reserve Battalions with 2000 policemen.

In the four months of 2005, there were 44 encounters (most of which were fake) in which 59 Naxalites were killed. In the same period in 2004, 52 Naxalites were killed. Those killed by the Maoists were 105 in 2005 compared to 78 in the earlier year as a whole.

While on the one hand, the government had begun its brutal offensive on the Maoists, it shamelessly continued its claims of peace talks and its commitment to maintain peace in the state. The CM and HM have been repeting ad nauseun the same chant of peace in the state which they assure would result if the Naxalites gave up their arms. The PCC president and one of the well-known buffoons of the Congress party, KKeshava Rao, undertook a shanti yatra even as his policemen were going on a killing spree. Like the devil himself citing the scriptures, all the Congress ministers and police officials began their propaganda for peace even as they created a bizarre blood-bath.

The encounters began on Jauary 6th when a squad member belonging to Janashakti, was killed in Karimnagar. On the 8th comrade Laxmi, an executive committee member of CMS, was caught and killed when she went to meet her husband who was a member of the district committee of Nallamala forest division. Thus the fake encounters regime had begun again after a gap of about eight months. The CPI(Maoist) state secretary of AP, comrade Ramakrishna, and the secretaries of the NTSZC and AOBSZC, comrades Jampanna and Sudhakar, issued a statement on January 15th saying that new tactics would have to be adopted by the Maoists to counter the military offensive of the state as the period of peace talks was over.

The Chief Minister and the Home Minister continued to cry from the rooftops every day that their government was ready for any number of rounds of talks with the Naxalites. But like their predecessor Chandrababu Naidu, they wanted the Naxalites to give up arms!

The rationale behind holding the first round of talks without any condition and bringing forth such impossible, irrelevant and impracticable conditions all of a sudden, was questioned by all and sundry. The YSR government, obviously, had no answer but only harped on his pet theme that Naxalites were misusing the period of cease-fire by collecting huge amounts of funds, procuring arms and ammunition, laying landmines all over the state in a bid to attack the police, and were taking advantage of the situation by making large-scale recruitment, and so on. Whether anyone is convinced or not, the Chief minister and the Home Minister continued to indulge in this propaganda and ordered the police forces to go into all-out assault. And the criminal DGP, who was trying to save his anti-social wife against whom a serious case of child trafficking was pending, went berserk. He gave full license to his special police forces, the Greyhounds and the central forces to kill at will anywhere in the state.

In the 44 encounters that were said to have taken place during the period since January 6th 2005, only five or six would be real encounters. The losses in these real encounters were actually few. But the actual losses occurred due to prior information received by the Intelligence wing i.e., the SIB through informers and covert agents. The biggest and the most ghastly incident is the one that was staged in Manala in Nizamabad on 7th March in which 10 Maoists were murdered in cold blood (See Box).

The biggest loss was the martyrdom of comrade Yadanna, who was the secretary of Warangal DC and a member of NTSZC. On 19th March comrade DVK Swamy alias Yadanna, along with three other comrades, were killed near Andugulameedi tanda hamlet in Venkatapuram mandal in Mulugu sub-division of Warangal. Comrade Swamy was the secretary of Khammam-Warangal DC and a member of the NTSZC at the time of his martyrdom. 34-year-old Yadanna hails from Raghunatha palli village in Warangal. He studied up to Intermediate and joined as a worker in the PEC factory in Jangaon in Warangal district. He joined the CPI(ML)[PW] in 1988 and went underground in 1991. He worked as the commander of Palakurthi, Cheryala and Nekkonda squads and as the secretary of Janagaon Party Area Committee. He led several attacks against the police and class enemies. He once served as the commander of the Platoon. He became a chief target for the police in the two districts and the SIB hatched several plans to eliminate him. He escaped the police dragnet several times. In July 2004, even when the cease-fire was in operation, the district police and the SIB tried to kill him by using a covert agent, Laxman in Oddugudem. The covert agent fired at comrade Yadanna in the middle of the night but the guards saved Yadanna and in the process two squad members gave up their lives. Yadanna was injured in this heinous attack planned by the SIB.

Then there were a series of incidents—the killing of Sudarshan of TJS and Nalla Vasanth, the vice President of the Warangal district unit of the ruling TRS, comrade Bhaskar in Nallamala, Ranjith and two others in Adilabad on 3rd February, Seenu a DCM of Karimnagar in March, Srisailam alias Santosh, a district committee member of Mahboobnagar, along with his wife comrade Pushpa. Both these comrades were transferred to DK and just before they left for DK they saw their parents on 31st of March. The police got word and caught them and murdered them on 1st April. Thousands of special police, Greyhounds and the central forces undertook a campaign to eliminate the leadership of the CPI(Maoist) in North Telangana, North Andhra, Nallamala and Rayalaseema. Other revolutionary parties such as Janashakti, Pratighatana, Praja Pratighatana and the CPI-USI group, were also the target of the police attacks.

The main concentration of the police has been on eliminating the leadership, particularly the district and state leadership of the three zones in AP. Even more concerted is the effort to eliminate the state committee secretary and a member of the CC, comrade Ramakrishna, who played a prominent role during the first round of talks and who has become quite popular among the people of AP. Hence the top political and police bigwigs decided to nab him as it would have a demoralizing effect on the Party cadres and the revolutionary sympathizers in the state. Accordingly, the notorious SIB drew up a plan to kill him. In the first week of February thousands of Special Forces entered Nallamala forest and tried to encircle the venue where Ramakrishna and other leaders were supposed to be camping.

As soon as the news of the police operations in Nallamala and the encirclement of Ramakrishna broke out, the pressure on the state and central government increased. The Congress party legislators ran to the Chief Minister and demanded that the police operations be stopped immediately lest they would be the targets if anything happened to the Maoist leader. The ministers in the Union Cabinet, Dasari Narayan rao and K Chandrasekhar Rao, met Sonia Gandhi and asked her to intervene in the state’s affairs and control the police operations by YSR. The police forces were said to have been withdrawn but the fact was that the Maoist leaders had retreated from the place just before the police tried to encircle their camping place.

Ever since then the police have been trying desperately to attack the leadership and have begun combing the Nallamala forests in a big way particularly from mid-March. Time and again they claimed to have surrounded the Maoist leaders including Ramakrishna, which, however, eventually turned out to be a false claim. Several villages in Nallamala forest were forcibly vacated. All the routes going into and coming out of the forest have been covered by batches of policemen. Couriers moving in and out of the forest were arrested or killed.

The police had begun to reenact their age-old tactics of physical assaults on the mass organization activists, threatening them through phone calls and visits to their houses asking them to resign from their organizations, filing cases against hem, involving them in the attacks against he police, taking them to the PS and torturing them, and so on. This type of harassment is seen very seriously whenever a violent incident takes place on the part of the Naxalites.

For instance, in Prakasham district, after the attack on the district SP, Mahesh Chandra Laddha, there was a virtual witch hunt for the activists of the mass organizations such as RWA, AIPRF and APCLC. At least a dozen of their leaders were arrested including the district president of RWA, Pinnika Srinivasa Rao, and a well-known poet, Rivera, Kula Nirmulana Sangham leaders Prabhakar and Prasad, and AIPRF leaders, Sajja Venkateswarlu. The leader of the Handloom Weavers’ Union (Chenetha Karmika Samakhya), Mohan Rao, was also arrested. These were taken to unknown places, torture severely and some were forced to hand in their resignation letters and only then they were let off. The experiences of North and South Telangana under the TDP regime were being repeated in the coastal districts today.

The family members and workers of these mass organizations organized dharnas, hunger strikes to protest against the arrests. Even children participated in these hunger strikes. The arrests are continuing in Prakasham, Guntur, Warangal, Mahboobnagar, Kurnool, Karimnagar, Medak, East and West Godavari districts, and other places.

While unleashing the massive inhuman onslaught on unarmed revolutionaries and their sympathizers when they were going out of the area for treatment or other works, killing them after arresting and torturing them cruelly, Chief Minister YSR has been crying for peace like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The more the terror unleashed by the police state that he is heading, the shriller his cries for peace, non-violence and Ghandhi’s ideals rent the air. Like their masters George Bush Jr and Tony Blair, who had become congenital liars, YSR and Jana Reddy, the Home Minister, have been merely surviving on lies. And the irony is that they know that they are uttering lies day in and day out; the people know that these hypocrites are repeating lies endlessly; and the two Ministers know that the people of the state know that they are indulging in white lies. In spite of this they go on telling lies like Bush and Blair even if people have lost interest and show apathy and indifference to all that they are saying.

It would be no exaggeration to say that the verbal offensive by these double-tongued frauds has surpassed that of Chandrababu Naidu. Referring to the attacks by the Maoists in retaliation to the killings by the police, YSR said that his govt was adhering to moral values in the war against Naxals whereas the latter had given up all ethical values to the winds and were indulging in attacks on unarmed policemen such as in the attack in Chilakaluri Pet where even the mother of the SI was not spared. The fact was that when the Maoists attacked the PS the SI fled to his house and when the Maoists opened fire on him his mother stepped forward to shield her son. It was clear that it was not done intentionally but the malicious propaganda by the YSR gang goes on with the aim of justifying its brutal murders.

In fact, it was the YSR gang which was desperately trying to fabricate lies, forge letters in the name of the Maoist leaders, and spreading all types of malicious slander in order to justify its stand of backing away from the talks and stepping up the offensive against the Maoists. The drama of forged letters created a furore in the first half of April and exposed the bizarre operations of the SIB and the secret Nazi apparatus that actually runs the state of AP.

The March 31st letter released in the name of Ramakrishna gave a call to the Party and PLGA cadre to kill the policemen and informers secretly and hide the dead bodies and to kill the class enemies with daggers and axes and not with firearms. The statement also justified the burning of the buses and destruction of all types of property. It was clear that the aim of the letter forged by the SIB was to create anarchy and thereby legitimize the illegitimate and lawless acts such as the one in Manala and to justify the brutal offensive the police had begun to launch. By accusing the Maoists of killing policemen and not declaring publicly or handing over their bodies, the YSR gang thought it can create revulsion among the people towards the Maoists by portraying them as terrorists, and to motivate the police to go for an all-out attack by whipping up hatred against the acts of the Maoists.

But all these plans came to naught when the genuine statement came from Ramakrishna ten days later and set things straight. The April 10th letter said that unlike the SIB and the Greyhounds and other anti-Naxal forces, it was never the policy of the Maoists to kill and hide the bodies of anyone. It would boldly declare to the world why it chose to kill a certain person, give the reasons for taking this extreme measure and also indicate where the corpses are lying. It also explained that, though a few incidents of bus burning might have taken place as an immediate reaction to a fake encounter or illegal detention, it was not the policy of the Party to burn the buses as it only caused inconvenience to the passengers. It exposed the conspiracy of the YSR gang in releasing the forged letter by which it wants to actually carry on the policy of "missings’ and "disappearances" and also rouse the hatred among the people and ordinary policemen.

On May 3rd, speaking at a passing out parade of the police officers at the AP Police Academy (APPA), YSR said that the police have to tackle the Naxals not only on the socio-economic front, but also on the political-ethical front. He was thus justifying the unethical war waged by his government and the police bosses through forged letters. What he also meant by this statement became clear when his government began an unethical fight against the Maoists by publishing the letter correspondence between the Talks representative Varavara Rao and the Central Committee of course, after considerable distortion of the letters (see box).

In retaliatory actions, the PLGA of the CPI(Maoist) conducted several raids and attacks on police stations, political leaders and informers in the state.

Five police stations, including the one in bordering Karnataka, were attacked—Chilakaluri pet and Durgi stations in Guntur district, Tripurantakam PS in Prakasham, Achampet in Mahboob Nagar, and Venkatammana Halli PS in Pavagada in Karnataka bordering Anantapur district. Three policemen were killed when their patrolling van was attacked in Nalgonda district. Totally, 18 policemen were killed in these attacks, six of these in neighbouring Karnataka. The attacks on the Venkatammana halli PS killing six special police and seizing 10 SLRs, killing of two policemen in Achampet PS and the attack on Mahesh Chandra Laddha, the SP of Prakasham district, showed the dare-devilry of the PLGA forces.

On 11th March at about 11pm, 50 Maoists attacked the PS in Chilakaluri Pet situated on the Grand Trunk road from Chennai to Kolkata. It is a completely plain area and the government least expected an attack on the station in the plains. The CI Prasad and three other constables were killed along with three civilians who were inside the station at the time of the attack. The SI Dharmendra, who was on the hitlist of the Maoists, fled the station after seeing them. The Maoists chased him and fired at him when he went into his house. His mother tried to protect him and died due to the bullet injuries while her son could escape from the house.

Several political leaders were also attacked, the prominent being the president of the District Congress committee of Mahboobnagar and the vice president of the Rangareddy district Congress committee. Most of the leaders belonging to the ruling Party fled the villages as the police expressed their helplessness in providing protection. Almost all the functionaries of the ruling Congress from the Mandal level to the state level have stopped visiting the villages in the Maoist-dominated areas since January this year and are moving with security even in the towns.

On 4th February, an autorickshaw carrying the CI and SI of Gurazala in Guntur district, and four other policemen was blasted by a claymour mine. Four policemen, including the CI, were seriously injured though they survived.

On 27th April, the DGP boasted while on his tour to North Andhra that the Maoists had been brought under control and have become incapacitated due to the measures initiated by the police that saw serious losses to the Maoists. He assured that there will be no more attacks in future. And within hours after he spoke there was the daring attack on the SP of Prakasham, Laddha, in the heart of Ongole town itself. The special action team of the PLGA escaped safely after carrying out the daring raid. Although the SP survived as his bullet-proof vehicle was blasted in the front part, the incident shook the morale of the police and was a slap in the face of the arrogant DGP.

After the daring attack on Laddha in Ongole town, all the VIPs beefed up their personal security. In the first week of May 2005, a year after YSR had proudly declared that he was in no need of the high personal security like his predecessor Naidu, and asked the officials not to stop the traffic for his convoy to pass through,was himself provided with remote jammers for his convoy to prevent mine attacks. A few months ago a huge mansion with high security bunkers and other protection was constructed for the stay of the Chief Minister at a cost of Rs. 10 crores. So much is the fear among the police officials and the politicians that several PSs were withdrawn and attached to bigger stations. Almost every politician of the ruling party fled to the cities and are living under heavy protection. This was one of the reasons for the poor turn out at the meetings organized as part of the praja patham programmes. The politicians did not dare to venture out to the villages.

All the police stations in and around the areas of armed struggle are protected by heavy fortification and three sentries. But the more important change is the use of Naxal sympathizers as a human shield for the protection of the PS. Every night 20-30 Naxal sympathizers from the villages are made to stay in the PS to ward off probable attacks from the Naxals. In the latest attack by the Maoists on Durgi PS in Guntur on 10th May, they found that over 50 people were inside the PS. And this had deterred the Maoists from continuing their raid on the PS.

The attack on the PS in the plains had unnerved the government and the police department and had intensified the contradictions between the various types of police forces. Whereas the Greyhounds, the APSP, CRPF and the SIB had everything at their disposal such as most sophisticated arms, mortars, grenades, communication sets, vehicles and funds, the police in the stations in the plains had a shortage of weapons and did not have even rifles. Most of them had muskets. Most of the funds allotted to the police department are consumed by the anti-Naxal special forces and the attack on Chilakaluri Pet PS highlighted this glaring difference and discrimination between the various types of police forces in the state. The police forces in the plains demanded that they be given sophisticated arms or close the stations. This meant a total of 10,000 SLRs have to be provided to these stations in the state—an impossible task at the present moment when the state is passing through the worst economic crisis. Any attempt to strengthen the police in these areas will reduce the funds for the anti-Naxal special forces—a prospect that the government cannot bear. Hence the contradictions will intensify with the further intensification of the war and the attacks by the Maoists on the stations outside their areas of armed struggle.

The policemen often traveled in buses along with the civilians but after repeated appeals and warnings by the Maoists to the people not to allow the policemen in the buses or not to travel in the buses along with the policemen, there is strong resistance from the villagers whenever policemen tried to board the buses. For instance, in Bellamkonda, when the policemen boarded the bus the passengers asked the bus to stop and forced the policemen out of the bus. Gradually the tactic of using passengers as a human shield is petering out due to the growing resistance of the people. In one incident in Guntur in end-January, Maoists blasted a landmine just before the arrival of a bus carrying 26 policemen and double that number of civilians in Bellamkonda. This was intended to serve as a warning for the people not to travel along with the policemen.

On March 15th, the police patrolling van which was standing near a petrol bunk on NH 9 near Dandumalkapur in Choutuppal mandal in Nalgonda district, was attacked by the PLGA forces and two policemen died on the spot. Two more were seriously injured. On 18th March a constable was killed in broad day-light in Balanagar mandal of Mahboobnagar district. The incident took place within a few hundred metres from the PS.

On April 20, rocket launchers were used to attack the OD Cheruvu PS in Anantapur district. Though no damage was done it shook the police force.

Even the much-trumpeted public meeting of Sonia Gandhi that was held in Hyderabad on the 20th of March became a tame affair in spite of spending huge sums of money and arrangement of lorries and buses to bring the people to the meeting. While the Congress bigwigs wanted to make it a big show and YSR himself gave the call to make it a huge success, the turn-out for the meeting was far less than the turn-out in Mogilicharla on 28 July 2004 organised by the then CPI(ML)[PW], or the one organized by the CPI(ML)[PW] and Janashakthi on 30 September 2004 or the Guthikonda Bilam meeting of 11 October to commemorate the martyrdom of comrade Charu Majumdar. The state committee of the CPI(Maoist) issued a call for boycott of the meeting of Sonia Gandhi which had an impact on the attempts of mass mobilization by the Congress. It showed the weak base of the Congress party and its sagging image in less than a year of rule.

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