THE REBEL AND THE WEAPONS

A decades-old picture of Azad from the police files

One of the slain men who the police claim was Azad

A gun found at the spot

The body of Azad’s escort Sahdev, with a hand gun by his side. Pictures by Vijaylakshmi.

New Delhi, July 2: Unlike in the Union home ministry’s Delhi offices, there was no chest-thumping in Andhra Pradesh today over the security forces’ biggest “success” against the Maoists till date.

There was no wild-eyed talk of having “avenged” the massacre of 26 CRPF troopers by shooting dead the Maoist number three, Cherukuri Rajakumar alias Azad.

When Andhra chief minister K. Rosaiah was asked about his police’s “success”, his reaction was sober. “They (the police) have said they have some information. I don’t want to say ‘failure’ or ‘success’. I don’t want to talk about it,” he told reporters.

His predecessor had reacted similarly in the past, shying away from glorifying small victories.

The state that has fought the Maoists the best has gone about the job quietly, doing its homework and carrying out its plans professionally. Even when the Andhra police have picked up Maoists in Delhi, they have done a good job of keeping it under wraps.

Azad was one of the Maoists’ 12 politburo members and 28 central committee members, most of them believed to be hiding in small towns across India.

“His death is a huge blow to the Maoists,” a Union home ministry official said. “Andhra has learned and innovated over the years.”

The success has been achieved by a two-pronged strategy of development in the tribal areas, to win the rural population over from the rebels, and well-planned raids on Maoist hideouts following sound intelligence — by state police rather than the central forces.

“The Maoist-hit states should realise that only state police can be effective in the fight against the rebels. They are sons of the soil and they know the people, but the central paramilitary forces don’t,” a senior Andhra police officer said.

His advice for the other states: “Back it (the security operations) up with focused development and plan for the next 20 years; the problem will not be over soon.”

Between 2005 and 2007, the state police virtually drove the guerrillas out of Andhra, a key role being played by the Grey Hounds, a special unit trained in counter-insurgency and jungle warfare. The CRPF has formed its anti-Maoist commando force, Cobra, on the lines of the Grey Hounds.

When the Maoists, facing the heat in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, began efforts to set up bases in Andhra again, the state police started Operation Octopus.

They killed many of the returning Maoists in recent months.

On the development front, Andhra set up a “remote and interior areas development ministry” in the 1990s — a move that contrasts sharply with Chhattisgarh’s decision to set up vigilante group Salwa Judum that alienated the tribals further.

Also, Andhra stopped harassing Maoist sympathisers in the villages. In 2007, it dropped all the cases against civil rights activists.

Senior officers say the lessons of 35 years of fighting the Maoists had come in handy. They recalled how the movement started by Kondapalli Seetharamaiah had spread from the regional engineering college in Warangal. Azad, too, had done his MTech from Warangal.

Today, the former rebel capital is not even among the four districts the state wants the Centre to include in the list of 134 worst Maoist-hit districts. Rosaiah met Union home minister P. Chidambaram today and urged him to include Vijayanagaram, Vizag, East Godavari and Srikakulam. Khammam is the lone Andhra district on the list now.