Securing anti-Naxal villagers worries cops
Two days after the massacre of six villagers in a Bihar village by the Maoists, the state’s police officials are faced with the increasingly difficult task of securing the lives of people in hundreds of villages who have started resisting demands from the rebels to provide shelter and cooperation as before.
The crisis assumed stark proportions after the 11 villagers abducted from the massacre site in Munger district were safely released by the rebels on Sunday with fearsome warnings that more villagers would be eliminated similarly if they worked for the state police. The cold-blooded massacre at Karaili village by the CPI(Maoist) rebels early on Saturday morning was largely aimed at punishing the emboldened villagers for refusing to continue cooperating with them.
Two villagers appointed as special police officers (SPO) appointed by the Bihar police to help combat the left-wing rebels — Shivan Rai and Sunil Rai — were among the six killed in the massacre. Shravan Koda, one of the 11 villagers abducted by the rebels, said: “We are very frightened. We were given very strong warnings”. These warnings, other villagers familiar with the incident said, were about working for the state police. Koda’s father, Narayan Koda, was one of the six men killed in the massacre.
Senior officials at the police headquarters in Patna said, after a preliminary review of the massacre, that villages with relatively greater threat from the Maoists due to their growing mutual opposition would be identified so that the local police station could be provided more policemen. One of the reasons the rebels could easily reach Karaili village in the uniform of CRPF personnel and began firing was the absence of any policeman in the police outpost near the village, said an official. On Monday, Bihar DGP Neelmani said 85 more police stations would be set up in the Maoist-affected areas with funding assistance from the Centre to strengthen the police network.
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