12 policemen wiped out in daring Maoist ambush in the Dandakaranya

This article was published in the Maoist Information Bulletin of the CPI (Maoist) which has been made available on Banned Thought.

12 policemen wiped out in daring Maoist ambush in Dhamtari (Dandakaranya)

On May 10 Maoist guerrillas carried out a daring tactical counteroffensive against a CRPF contingent in Dhamtari district near border with Kanker district in Chattisgarh. At least 12 CRPF personnel were wiped out in the operation while another ten were injured. Some were said to have been missing after the ambush.

The CRPF personnel numbering 41 were going to Kanker in four vehicles after carrying out combing operations for Maoists. Maoists lay in ambush over a hiilock and lured the policemen into their trap. One of the vehicles was blown to pieces while others were fired upon. The entire enemy force was encircled and half the force was either annihilated or inured. Several arms were also seized by the guerrillas from the policemen.
The successful tactical counteroffensive was carried out by a company of the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA) led by CPI(Maoist). It had come at a time when a US delegation was on a visit to Chattisgarh to assess the ground situation in order to extend assistance and advice to counter the Maoists. The daring ambush is also a reply to the ever-growing state terror and state- sponsored terror on the people of Dandakaranya particylarly after the fascist BJP assumed office for the second time in December last.

Scores of Maoist sympathisers and people in the areas of Maoist influence were arrested and shot dead. The CRPF-police forces along with SPOs and salwa judum gangs have been creating mayhem in various parts of Dandakaranya, looting, killing, raping and destroying.

The police tried to underplay the losses on their side by first saying that only two of their men had died in the ambush and then slowly increasing the number to five, then eight, ten and finally a dozen.

At the time of the incident the chief minister Raman Singh was on election
campaign in other states while the state Home Minister Nankiram Kanwar was attending a Bhagawat katha meeting in Korba. The media attacked him comparing him to Nero who was fiddling when Rome was burning. Calling him as Nero of Chattisgarh there was clamour for his resignation. Nankram Kanwar admitted that it was wrong to have remained at the Bhagwat katha meeting in Korba instead of visiting the site of the Maoist ambush to boost the morale of the police. He also declared that he would contain the Maoist movement in the state within one year or else resign from his post.

The Congress, meanwhile, constituted an enquiry committee to probe the incident in Risgaon. There was widespread criticism of the intelligence department for its total failure in assessing the situation in Dhamtari even after they had begun to expand their activities in the new region in a big way in recent months.

The reaction of the media to the Maoist ambush, its provocative propaganda against the Maoists, the scare it has tried to create among a section of the people by repeatedly saying that the Maoists are now within less than 100 km from the state capital and hence the security of the VIPs and others in the capital is at stake, and its criticism and advice to the government to unleash more serious state repression on the Maoists by increasing the deployment of police forces and adopting a consistent policy of suppressing the Maoists shows the large-scale nature and brutality of the impending state attack in Chattisgarh which is already witnessing unprecedented state-led and state-sponsored terror on the adivasi population in Dandakaranya region.

This is the first such incident in Mainpuri area in the bordering region of Dhamtari and Kanker. The area is a newly-extended one and in the very initial phase Maoists suffered a serious loss in the area when a senior leader and secretariat member of Dandakaranya special zonal committee, Madkam Gopanna, was arrested from the area along with five others in May 2007. The landlord responsible for the arrest of Madkam was annihilated after a few months.

After the initial losses Maoists sent some more cadres into the area and within a short time received tremendous response from the local people. The condition of the masses is so miserable that they are very much eager to wage militant armed struggle to solve their problems.

The coming days will witness more and more Risgaons as the fascist state steps up its repression, unleashes brutal attacks on the people and carries out massacres like that in Singaram in January last. The people of the area will get organized into people’s militia as in Dantewada, Bijapur, Narayanpur, Kanker and other areas and prepare themselves to face the state’s brutal repression with greater determination, courage and planning based on the principles of Maoist guerrilla warfare. As in other parts of Dandakaranya, people in Dhamtari too will come forward in a big way into the ongoing people’s war, join the people’s liberation guerrilla army, establish their own organs of political power, and resist the police and central armed forces under the leadership of the PLGA and the CPI(Maoist).

The Maoist Information Bulletin hails the daring, heroic ambush by the Maoist PLGA near Risgaon and sends its revolutionary greetings to all the participants in this counter-offensive and the leadership that had meticulously planned the attack. It warns the fascist Raman Singh government that Risgaons would be the only answer if he chose to continue the brutal repression by the state’s police and by armed vigilante gangs sponsored by the state.

It also appeals to the policemen engaged in operations against the Maoists and the people at large to stop harassing and killing people, disobey their higher authorities, and to surrender before the people’s armed forces whenever they are called upon to do so. This alone can save their lives and avoid unnecessary blood-shed. They should realize that they are being used as cannon-fodder by the reactionary rulers in their class war against the toiling masses led by the Maoists.