Maoist rebels kill 15 policemen in eastern India
KOLKATA, India, Feb 15 (Reuters) – About 100 Maoist rebels, many riding motorcycles, stormed a police camp in eastern India on Monday and killed at least 15 policemen as they fired indiscriminately and set fire to the site. Police said the ambush was on a camp in the state of West Bengal, 200 km (125 miles) west of the state capital Kolkata, in the same area where a major anti-Maoist offensive was launched last year. "No less than 15 security personnel were killed," senior police official Surajit Kar Purakayastha told Reuters in Kolkata. In June last year, police pushed back the rebels to regain control of Lalgarh, a cluster of 150 villages in the same West Midnapore area. West Bengal Director General of Police Bhupinder Singh said the rebels took away a huge cache of weapons in the latest assault. A rebel group leader, who calls himself as Kishenji, telephoned a Kolkata-based news channel to claim responsibility for the attack. "(It was) carried out to retaliate against the combined operation of West Bengal police and central paramilitary forces against the Maoists," he told the news channel. The Maoist rebellion began four decades ago, championing the cause of poor peasants in the east, but has now spread to about 20 of India’s 29 states, with the rebels targeting police and government property in hit-and-run attacks. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has warned the rebels have managed to retain support among a cross-section of society and remain the country’s biggest internal security threat. After a resounding general election win in May, the Congress party-led government has decided to take on an estimated 22,000 Maoist rebels who hold sway over swathes of countryside. (Editing by Matthias Williams and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
Jyoti Basu – poster boy of Indian communism
(UPDATE: Communist patriarch Jyoti Basu died on Sunday)
When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh rushed to Kolkata on Thursday just to pay a 22-minute visit to the hospital where 95-year-old Jyoti Basu is battling for life, the trip spoke volumes about the communist patriarch’s relevance in Indian politics.
India’s longest serving chief minister is on ventilator support but the throngs of teary-eyed followers outside the hospital, the 24×7 mediapersons camping outside and the steady stream of political dignitaries indicate the respect Basu commands across the political spectrum.
The Prime Minister offered to fly in experts from anywhere in India to treat Basu.
A day later, former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda also visited the ailing leader in Kolkata.
“I remember what Jyoti Basu has sacrificed. He made me the prime minister of this country,” Gowda told reporters recalling the political stalemate in 1996.
In May 1996, Basu, then firmly in the saddle as the longest serving chief minister of West Bengal, was on the verge of becoming India’s first communist prime minister as a consensus choice amid political chicanery.
Are the Maoists gaining ground in West Bengal?
Hundreds of tribal people backed by the Maoist guerrillas stormed the high-speed Rajdhani Express, one of the country’s most prestigious passenger trains, in West Bengal on Tuesday. Police and security forces could free the train and its driver after a five-hour-long hostage drama, including a gunfight with the rebels in the forest.Maoists have stepped up violence across eastern and central India and internal security experts say it indicates a growing dominance of the insurgents in the state.The rebels raided a police station in West Bengal this month and abducted a senior official after gunning down two of his colleagues.Police officer Atindranath Dutta was held captive for two days and freed in exchange for 23 tribal women lodged in prisons for suspected Maoist links.Maoist attacks on police posts are nothing new in an area that has witnessed an anti-insurgency operation since June and the rebels have taken effective control of large swathes of the countryside.The insurgents say they are waging war on behalf of the poor and the landless against the state. The attack has raised concerns and West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said the swap was an “exception, not a norm.”Security experts say the Maoists, whom Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has identified as the country’s biggest internal threat, have thrown an open challenge to the authorities.In June a combined force of central paramilitary troops and state police retook control of Lalgarh, a town captured by the Maoists in West Midnapore district of West Bengal.The government began cracking down on the rebel leaders and sympathisers since then.The policeman abduction episode has apparently galvanised the communist government in West Bengal which has said it will heavily weaponise policemen and fortify its police stations. The NGOs working in Maoist-affected areas blame the government for the state of affairs.Is increasing Maoist violence in West Bengal indicative of a growing clout of the rebels?
Indian police take control of train after attack
KOLKATA, India, Oct 27 (Reuters) – Police took control of a stranded high-speed train in eastern India on Tuesday after it was stormed by hundreds of tribal people linked to Maoist rebels, police said. The Rajdhani Express, one of the country’s most prestigious passenger trains, was stopped in West Bengal state. The attackers demanded the release of their leader, who had been arrested on charges of helping the country’s growing Maoist rebellion. "We have taken possession of the train," Dilip Mitra, a police officer, told Reuters in the state capital Kolkata. Police earlier said the attackers were Maoists, who have stepped up violence across eastern and central India and against whom the Indian government has planned a large-scale offensive. [ID:nBOM478216] The Maoist rebellion began four decades ago championing the cause of poor peasants in the east, but has now spread to about 20 of India’s 29 states, with the rebels targeting police and government property in hit-and-run attacks. Police said the men who attacked the train wanted security forces to stop an anti-Maoist crackdown in the area around Lalgarh, a town at the centre of protests against an industrial expansion plan. [ID:nDEL296260] Two groups of security forces approached the train, and a police driver was injured by a bullet, Mitra said. The second group took over the train unopposed as the attackers fled. A tribal body, known as the "Committee of the Common People", claimed responsibility for the train attack. "We demand … an immediate halt to the operation in Lalgarh by the police and central paramilitary forces," a spokesman for the group said. Maoist rebels have in the past attacked goods trains and even hijacked a few passenger trains in remote districts before fleeing. "The good news is, the train is safe, all passengers are safe," India’s home minister P. Chidambaram told reporters. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has warned the rebels have managed to retain support among a cross-section of society and remain the the country’s biggest internal security threat. While the economic impact may be small compared with India’s trillion dollar economy, the insurgency and the sense that it is worsening signals that India does not fully control its own territory and adds to risks for companies mulling investments. (Writing by Bappa Majumdar and Matthias Williams; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)
After wooing voters, Mamata charms Bengal Inc
Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee rolls on with a bagful of bounty for one and all in West Bengal, even as the state’s corporate big wheels close ranks with her.Her eyes all set on the 2011 assembly elections, Banerjee shed the image of an anti-industry politician, using to the hilt the resources the world’s largest employer (Indian Railways) could offer.The industry-basher epithet stuck thick on Mamata after Tata Motors made an angry exit from Singur last year, bowing before a wave of protests over 400 acres of farmland acquired forcibly by the communist state government for the Nano plant.Just when a section of people and political pundits had written her off, Mamata’s gamble with the land movement and the state’s poor human rights record paid off.Now in a hurry to catch the 2011 train, Mamata (referred to in local media as chief minister-in-waiting) has impressed industrialists with her impatience to fast-track projects in West Bengal.She is now offering land to set up factories, emphasizing on setting up Public Private Partnership (PPP) models to develop the infrastructure of railway and industry.”Mamata means business” wrote The Telegraph after her August 21 meeting with industrialists. The largest circulated English daily from eastern India had less than a year ago written against the Trinamool Congress chief for driving out the Tatas from Singur.Mamata’s meeting was a durbar of sorts as she addressed members of the country’s three leading chambers of commerce and urged industrialists to set up shop on available railway land.”I urge you all to take the opportunity and use the land available to set up industry,” she told industrialists, chanting her slogan of Ma, Mati and Manush (Mother, Soil and People).Mamata said the railways had already prepared a land bank and about 112,000 acres are available.With her popular railway budget and various initiatives, the ghosts of Singur seemed to have been exorcised. Mamata said land disputes can be avoided with proper planning and human approach.The meeting, which has been organised by the Railways, cleared any doubts about her anti-industry posturing in the past.For now it is brand Mamata that rules Bengal as excitement builds up in the run-up to her big show in 2011.
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