Meanwhile, Indian Home Minister P Chidambaram has admitted the
failure to contain the Maoist movement in central India from spreading
in northeast states. He told a conference of the state chief ministers
in New Delhi on April 16 that offensive to defeat the Maoists is being
hampered for shortage of police while absence of roads, schools,
hospitals in Maoist-hit states makes it hard to win support of the poor
villagers who are siding with the rebels

An earlier report said
thousands of police and paramilitary forces deployed in Maoist infested
voluntarily deserted or resigned from services. Some of them even
committed suicide under mental pressure. Ill equipped they refused to
face up the dreaded Maoists

Setting new deadline for conceding to the demands by April 18 for
securing release of the MLA of Orissa, Maoist leader Jagabandhu in a
letter to the government said Hikaka’s wife Kaushalya, lawyer Nihar
Patnaik and 29 prisoners they want to release from the jail must reach
the designated place in Koraput district for safe return of Hikaka from
their captivity. He refused to file bail petition for release of the
rebels saying all cases against them should be withdrawn to make them
free.

Meanwhile, Orissa Police Association had warned the government against
letting off hardcore Maoists including Ghasi who is accused of killing
at least 55 cops. The police association has threatened to withdraw from
anti-Maoist operation if the rebels are freed.

In Jharkhand, Maoists have fastened their seat belts to take on the
paramilitary and specialized security forces. They have strongly opposed
the Kutku Dam project, voiced serious concerns at the adverse impacts
of the dam and called upon the environmentalists and intelligentsia to
come forward and protest the move of the government in completing the
dam project that would lead to submerge of around 32 villages.

Maoist spokesperson of the region Manas said the Operation Octopus by
paramilitary forces aims at crushing the villagers and forest dwellers
who fear displacement once the dam gates and the walls are completed. In
fact, Operation Octopus was designed to flush out the villagers in the
name of anti-Maoist operations so that they can complete the dam project
without any hurdle. “But the CPI(Maoist) are not ready to give a
freeway to the security forces,” Manas said.

Operation Octopus began this month on the Bihar-Jharkhand and
Chhatisgarh borders where the Maoists established free zones. The first
encounter with Maoists took place on April 5 in which one COBRA
personnel was killed and two others were injured, the second clash
occurred on April 9, in which one PLGA member was killed and about a
dozen paramilitary forces were injured. “Operation Octopus is one of the
most intense crackdowns of the security forces till date, but our one
PLGA platoon took on the mighty force of over 700 paramilitary forces,”
said a rebel leader.

The chief ministers conference in Delhi was convened to discuss internal
security threat posed by the Maoists. Assam chief Minister Tarun Gogoi
appealed to the central government to take strong measures for thwarting
the Maoist insurgency. He told the conference that the rebels have
spread their activities in northeast states. They have the joined with
the separatist groups of Assam, Manipur and Nagaland and created
interstate linkage with Arunachal and Meghalaya posing a serious
security threat.

Uttarkhand chief minister Vijay Bahuguna raised concerns about the
threat posed by the Moists in Nepal who have declared Kalapani in
Pithoragarh district to be a Nepalese territory and repeatedly
threatening to march to it.

“A frontal organisation of the Nepalese Maoists, the Young Communist
League (YCL), is very active in the Nepalese province of Mahakali
Anchal, which has borders with Uttarakhand,” the chief minister said.

He informed the conference that intelligence inputs indicate that CPI
Maoists have designs to deploy People’s Liberation Guerilla Army cadres
in Uttarakhad and intensify their tactical counter-offensive campaign in
order to push the state into the “fourth stage” of the revolutionary
movement.