Red Cross, MSF under scanner
International agencies — Nobel Peace Prize winner Medicines Sans Frontiers (MSF) (popularly known as Doctors without Borders) and Indian Red Cross Society — are under scanner of the Chhattisgarh police for allegedly “aiding Maoists” in Bastar region, the epicentre of Naxal activities in the country, senior police officers said on
Wednesday. The police has begun investigations into their roles in the region after two suspected Naxals were arrested at Kirandul in Dantewada district on Tuesday while procuring huge quantities of medicines from the local medical stores, apparently to supply them to the rebel cadres in Bastar.
The police said the arrested rebels spilled the beans detailing procurement of essential and life saving medicines for Maoists from some particular drug stores in the Naxal-infested areas in Dantewada and Bijapur districts. The shopkeepers also reportedly confessed before the police that they were coerced to supply medicines to the rebel cadres at various places in Bastar region.
“The owners of the medicine stores have revealed international aid agencies, like France-based MSF and Indian Red Cross Society, have been unauthorisedly providing health services to the ultras who fall sick or are injured in encounter with the police,” Dantewada district senior superintendent of police (SSP) S.R.P. Kaluri told this newspaper.
Bijapur district superintendent of police R.N. Das, when contacted, said a number of cases of MSF functionaries attending to Maoists injured in the encounters have come to the notice of the police.
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