Panchayat report censors chapter on Naxal influence

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“There has been a systematic failure in giving tribals a stake in modern economic processes that inexorably intrude into their living spaces … systematic exploitation … of our tribal communities can no longer be tolerated,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had said in November 2009.

Five months later, on April 24, Singh released the State of Panchayat Report (SoPR) 2010 not knowing that a department, which commissioned the report, deleted a chapter capturing the plight of the tribals.

The Ministry of Panchayati Raj thought the chapter  —PESA, Militancy and Governance concerns and challenges in India’s tribal districts — dealing with the rights and problems of tribals of the PESA districts under the Red Corridor, does not match with that of a government report.  Panchayat’s (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act , 1996 (PESA) intended to shift balance of power through PRIs to the tribals in areas covered by Fifth Schedule. Out of the 76 Maoist hit districts , 32 are PESA districts.

It appears that the chapter was cut out because the report talks of tribals turning to ultras for protection against state oppression. The study was commissioned in 2009 by the Ministry of Panchayati Raj to Institute of Rural Management, Anand. But when the report was submitted a year later to the Ministry, it found objections.

The report while criticising coercive ways of Maoists also mentions “the good work done by the party” like mobilising community labour for farm ponds, rain-water harvesting and land conservation works.

Terming Salwa Judum extra-constitutional it says  “such conditions of tumult disrupted normal life, rendering PESA meaningless on ground”.

“Ministry of Panchayati Raj had observed that SoPR couldn’t be an academic study for incorporating extreme views. It should be balanced and should lead constructive suggestions. You are requested to edit the chapters accordingly and e-mail to us as soon as possible.”

But sources indicate it could have been under the direction of more than one ministry that the chapter was removed.

For IRMA, whose researchers spent months in Maoist-hit areas, the deletion of the chapter came as a shock. “The attempt by MoPR is intrusive, questioning the autonomy of SoPR. The suggestion  to edit it is … even coercing to come up with views palatable to them…” a professor at IRMA said.

When contacted, A.N.P. Sinha, secretary MoPR said, “I do not care what a professor or an attender at IRMA says. Ask the director why it was deleted.”

Scribe bumped off in Azad encounter?

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NEW DELHI: Relatives of Hemchandra Pandey, the man killed along with CPI (Maoist) leader Cherkuri Rajkumar alias Azad in an alleged encounter in Andhra Pradesh, described him as a freelance journalist on Saturday.At least a couple of Delhi newsmen too remembered Pandey as a struggling journalist who wrote on social issues, but the paper he was supposed to have worked for denied it.”My husband was an honest freelance journalist who wrote on social issues for Nai Duniya, Rashtriya Sahara and Jagran. They (AP police) killed my husband brutally in a stage-managed encounter, I’ll not spare them for this vicious act,” said Babita, Pandey’s wife, restraining her tears. However, Nai Duniya‘s editor Alok Mehta said, “No person called Hemchandra Pandey had ever contributed to our paper in any manner.” Flanked by human rights activists and her brother Vijay Vardhan Upreti, also a journalist, Babita recalled that Pandey had told her on June 30 that he was going to Nagpur to do a story. “He promised to return on July 2. He was there perhaps to interview Azad. But that was not to be. Please expose this terror unleashed by the State on sincere people,” she pleaded. “This encounter makes it apparent that the State doesn’t want peace but is only interested in exploiting mineral resources. It is because of this greed that Babita has lost her husband,” former SC/ST commissioner of Bastar B D Sharma alleged. Babita identified Pandey through a photograph published in Eenadu. She is expected to reach Adilabad on Sunday.The rights activists termed the killing of Azad as a big blow to the possible peace talks which the Maoist leader was pursuing vigorously. “Azad was the one who acknowledged and appreciated our Peace March from Raipur to Dantewada. He was the one who responded to Home Minister P Chidambaram’s call for peace talks almost immediately. We understand that he was picked up by the police when he was heading to Dandakaranya forests to discuss peace talks with his comrades,” said Professor Banwarilal Sharma of the Campaign for Peace and Justice.The Campaign, signed by Medha Patkar, Dr V N Sharma and other social activists, demanded an independent enquiry into the killing of Azad and Pandey.ENS adds from Hyderabad: Pandey was from Pithoragarh in Uttarakhand and was a resident of Haldwani area in Nainital. Pithoragarh SP Nilesh Anand Pandey said, “Pandey had started a magazine called Karwan and was its editor. He did his diploma in journalism from Gadhwal University in Srinagar (Uttarakhand).” The SP further said Pandey had graduated in Economics from Pithoragarh College. “For some time, he worked in the Uttarakhand Kisan Sangharsh Samiti and later started Karwan from Almora,” he said. A different picture emerges from what Nainital SP Mohan Singh Bangyal told this paper. Confirming that Pandey had worked for a channel for some time, Bangyal said the police had no information of his involvement in illegal activities.

It is not an encounter at all!! It is a cold blooded murder by AP Police!!

COMMUNIST PARTY OF INDIA (MAOIST)
CENTRAL COMMITTEE

North Regional Bureau

Press statement

3rd July, 2010
It is not an encounter at all!! It is a cold blooded murder by AP Police!!
Red Salutes to Martyrs com. Azad (Cherukuri Rajkumar) and com. Hem Pandey (Jitender)!!
Let us avenge the killings of the beloved comrades by the khaki clad fascist gangs of AP government!!

Azad was arrested at Nagpur on June 1st along with com. Hem Pandey

On June 1st, the notorious Andhra Pradesh Special Branch Police for its abductions and cold blooded murders, have arrested com. Azad, Polite Bureau member and Spokesperson of CPI (Maoist), and com. Hem Pandey, a zonal committee level comrade in Nagpur city around 11′o clock when they went to meet a comrade who was supposed to receive them from Dandakarnaya zone. Com. Azad reached Nagpur around 10 am on the fateful day along with com. Hem Pandey, after travelling from long distance. With specific information, the lawless goons of AP SIB abducted them, perhaps flown them in a helicopter, to Adilabad jungles near Maharashtra border and killed them point block and in cold blood.

We pay our red homage to our beloved comrades and vow to take vengeance of these killers.

Life of com. Azad

Comrade Azad is one of the senior most party leaders of CPI (Maoist). He was born in Krishna district of AP, in a well to do family. He did his school education in Sainik School, at Korukonda of the present Vizianagaram District. Com. Surapuneni Janardhan, a legendary comrade of the student movement brought com. Raj Kumar into RSU in 1974. A brilliant student at the Regional Engineering College, which became famous as Radical Engineering College in those days, he finished his Mtech in Chemical Engineering and moved to Vishakhapatnam as per the Party direction. He was the second president of AP Radical Students Union till 1984. He was the catalyst behind many all Andhra wide student agitations and peoples movements in that period. He became the district committee member of vizag unit of the CPI (ML) (PW). He moved length and breadth of India, to organize the Seminar on Nationality question held in Madras (now Chennai) in 1981. He was shifted to Karnataka in 1982 and com. Azad was one of the founder members of the Karnataka Party and worked as the secretary of the Karnataka State Committee. He was taken into CC, after the Central Plenum in 1990. He was the elected member of CC in the All India conference in 1995 and since then he served in CC and PB. He continued in those posts after the formation of CPI Maoist too in 2004. He has been the spokes person of the CC since then.

Known for his simple life and hard work; voracious reading and brilliant analyses of situations, crystal clear articulation and sharp logic, and fine organizational skills, he contributed widely to the revolutionary movement in many spheres. He wrote profusely to the People’s March, Peoples war (theoretical organ of the CPI (Maoist), and to the Maoist Information Bulletin. He wrote a fine critique of the intellectuals of AP, who got disillusioned and lost faith in revolutionary movement after the 1990 events of collapse of soviet imperialism and its satellite regimes.

In his death, the Indian revolutionary movement lost an exemplary comrade and a shining star, who served the movement more than three and half decades.

Just before his last journey, he received questions for interview from a well known magazine. He replied that he was in the journey and would send the answers as early as possible.

It is not Sukhdev, but com. Hem Pandey of Uttarakhand who was killed by APSIB

Com. Hem Pandey, 30, hailed from a nearby village of Pithoragarh town of Uttarakhand State. He did his MA history in Nainital University and got himself registered in PhD. While he was in college, he was active member of AISA, and slowly realizing he pseudo revolutionary character of AISA politics, he moved to the radical groups, later in 2001 he joined the then CPI (ML) (PW). He organized peasantry in the mountainous villages in Almora district, taking up umpteen numbers of issues of peasantry, including the problems arose out of Binsar Sanctuary. Soft-spoken, bespectacled, lean and energetic Com. Hem won the love of people of that region. He was moved into more important works in 2005. He had done his new assignments with patience and endurance. His appetite for learning new things, reading more and more, and zeal for penning his ideas are things for the emulation for all the revolutionaries. He has written various articles to newsmagazines under various pen names. We request the civil rights organisations to demand the A P police to send the body of com. Hem Pandey to his bereaved mother who is in Haldwani, Uttarakhand state, who is his sole surviving parent.

APSIB- the Indian avatar of Mossad

The Andhra Pradesh Special Intelligence Bureau, which has been partially trained partially by the Mossad, has acquired the notoriety of its master trainer-Mossad, in India. It has been moving across the state borders, and conducting abductions and cold blooded murders with impunity. This is all happening with clear blessings of Manmohan- Sonia and Chidambaram. This fascist gang has established its tentacles all over India, resorting the killings of revolutionaries, scoffing at the recent AP high court judgement that all encounters are to be first booked as murders under IPC 302, Ultimaely these killers will be taken to task by the revolutionary masses.

Will Chidambaram expect CPI (Maoist) to sit for talks with his blood on his hands of com. Azad and com. Hem Pandey?

CPI (Maoist) never contested or raised any hue and cry in the case of real encounters. The AP Police is resorting to globbeian lies, not believed even by gullible. CPI (Maoist) stood for truth and accountability to the people, and always stated facts. There is no such programme of Azad going to Sarkepally forest of Adilabad. Azad was going to discuss with our comrades, inter alia, the concrete proposals of well meaning people like Swamy Agnivesh about particular dates for the mutual cease fire. He was a carrying the confidential letter of Swamy Agnivesh written to Azad dated- 26th June 2010. Will Chidambaram expect CPI (Maoist) to sit for talks with his blood on his hands of com. Azad and com. Hem Pandey? He calls repeatedly to us to abjure violence? Killing the unarmed comrades by AP Police with your blessings – is it not like devils chanting scriptures?

White lies by AP Police

When there is no movement and organization in Adilabad, what is the necessity of Azad going to Azad? That the police found AK47 is again white lie. He alighted from a train around 10 am along with com. Hem Pandey in Nagpur Station, and was caught by the APSIB unarmed. Is the government following its own constitution of article 21? Is the government following kernel of the Geneva Convention that “defenceless persons” should not be harmed? Is it not utter hypocrisy and hoax that on one hand the government is placing the prevention of torture bill and the police every minute resorting to the torture of the detained? It is a concocted story of encounter repeated ad nauseum, by the AP Police, churned out to the media umpteen times. The right life, guaranteed under the constitution is mocked and the right to be produced within 24 hours of the arrest is metamorphasized into killing within 24hours of arrest, so that there is no scope for any redressal by their near and dear.

We appeal to the civil rights organizations, democrats, patriots to raise to raise to the occasion thoroughly investigate this fake encounter as an example of extra judicial killing that are happening in scores in this country and bring out the truth before the people.

Ajay,

Spokes Person,

CPI (Maoist)

Top Maoist killed in A.P.

S. Harpal Singh and K. Srinivas Reddy

Big blow to Naxal movement

THE END:Cherukuri Rajkumar, a top Naxalite, who was killed by police in Adilabad district on Friday. ADILABAD/HYDERABAD: The Andhra Pradesh police on Friday said it had shot dead top naxalite Cherukuri Rajkumar alias Azad, along with an unidentified cohort, in an exchange of fire in Adilabad district, close to the State’s border with Maharashtra.
The death of Azad, a member and spokesman of the Central Committee of the CPI (Maoist) and a member of the Polit Bureau, has dealt a big blow to the Maoist movement in India.
Even as some sources questioned the encounter theory, the police said the gunfight lasted more than three hours. An AK-47 assault rifle, a pistol and two kitbags were found at the scene.
The alleged encounter took place on a 500-metre-high hillock 3 km from the nearest motorable road. With the monsoon having set in, the forest had become lush green, and the tribals had started farming operations. Some of them were tilling the land, but none would speak to The Hindu about the encounter.
Azad,58, hailed from Krishna district. He went underground in 1979. He was arrested in 1975 and 1978 and jumped bail. He carried a reward of Rs. 12 lakh on his head. He had apparently been tasked with reviving the Maoist movement in Andhra Pradesh. He was a member of the Urban Sub-Committee and was in charge of the South Western Regional Bureau of Maoists, which coordinates the movement in Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Gujarat.
Adilabad Superintendent of Police P. Promod Kumar told journalists that the police had launched combing operations following intelligence inputs that a team of Maoists had moved into the forests from Maharashtra. One of the police teams encountered a group of 25 to 30 rebels in the hilly terrain near Sarkepally, a village 15 km from the border with Maharashtra.

‘Slain Maoist leader was working on ceasefire’

Communist Party of India [ Images ] Maoist leader Cherukuri Rajkumar alias Azad was working on a proposal for a ceasefire between the Left-wing extremists and security forces when he was nabbed by the AP police and killed in a fake encounter, a CPI-Maoist leader has claimed.

Gudsa Usendi, spokesman of the Dandakarniya special zone committee of the CPI-Maoist, told rediff.com that Azad was articulating the point of view of the organisation to Home Minister P Chidambaram’s [ Images ] proposal for a 72-hour ceasefire and peace talks.

“In fact, he was coming to Dandakarniya region to talk to us to work out a ceasefire when he was caught by the police near Nagpur,” he said.

“Now the dastardly killing of Azad shows that Chidambaram’s talk was a mere drama,” he said.

“Azad wanted a meaningful exercise. He wanted Operation Green Hunt to be stopped and wanted to ensure ceasefire from both the sides,” Usendi said.

Usendi claimed that a freelance journalist from Delhi [ Images ], Hemchandr Pandey, was accompanying Azad when he was nabbed by the police. Pandey was reportedly a resident of Dewaltal village in Pithorgarh in Uttarkhand who was working as a free lance journalist in Delhi.

Both of them were taken to Adilabad forest and killed in the forest area in a staged encounter, Usendi claimed.

Maoist sympathiser Vara Vara Rao claimed that Pandey was doing a story on ‘the atrocities on tribal population in the name of Operation Green Hunt against Maoists’.

On Friday, the police had claimed that Azad and another unidentified Maoist were killed in an encounter in Jogapur forest area of Adilabad district. According to the police, the Maoists and the police personnel exchanged gunfire for over four hours. But locals residing in nearby hamlets claimed that they had not heard any sound of firing.

Adilabad District Superintendent of Police Pramod Kumar said between 20 and 25 Maoists participated in the encounter.

The identification of the other victim as a journalist has only added to the confusion and raised several uncomfortable questions for the police.

Vara Vara Rao has demanded a judicial inquiry into the entire episode.

PTI adds:

The Andhra Pradesh police said that the identity of the person killed along with Azad was yet to be established.

“We are yet to establish the identity of the deceased,” said Andhra Pradesh Director General of Police R R Girish Kumard.

Mohammed Siddique in Hyderabad