The recent verdict by a Raipur court sentencing civil rights activist Binayak Sen to life imprisonment for sedition has triggered an encounter of a strange kind between the police and Maoists in Chhattisgarh.
While the police has virtually launched a “propaganda blitzkrieg” raising apprehension of a major attack by the rebels in the state to “avenge” the conviction of the rights leader along with Naxal ideologue Narayan Sanyal and Maoist sympathiser Pijush Guha by the court here, the outlawed CPI (Maoist) has begun a counter campaign to “rubbish” the police theory of revenge attack by the rebels.
Sources said the rebel leadership could “see the design of the police behind the theory of major Maoist retaliation to link the rights activist to the ultras” and “consciously” refrained from indulging in any kind of violence in the state since the pronouncement of the verdict on December 24.
“Opposing the repressive policies of the government, the fascist Salwa Judum, raising his voice for the repeal of the black law CSPSA (Chhattisgarh State Public Security Act) and standing in support of the just people’s movements are the crimes committed by Dr Binayak Sen for which he was punished with life imprisonment,” a press release issued by the central committee of the outfit on its official pad said on Tuesday.
The release has been signed by one Abhaya, who claimed himself to the spokesperson of the Central Committee, CPI (Maoist).
“Our central committee is making it very clear that no call for bandh is being given as part of this protest week (called by the Maoists from January 2-8 to denounce Dr Sen’s conviction) and is requesting people and media not to believe the deliberate propaganda of the police to portray this as bandh call,” the release added.
Incidentally, the state government has sounded a high alert across Chhattisgarh, particularly in Naxal-stronghold of Bastar, fearing violence by the ultras to oppose the court verdict.
Quoting intelligence reports, the police establishment claimed to have spotted movements of large number of armed rebel militiamen at some places in Bastar region after the verdict was pronounced.