While the Centre has given its go-ahead for a tribal battalion of the CRPF, with recruitment limited to Bastar locals who will be exclusively deployed in the region for the first five years, a similar unit raised by the state police a year ago has polarised opinion in Chhattisgarh. Personnel of the District Reserve Group (DRG), set up in May 2015, were to be used exclusively for operational duties in Bastar as opposed to other personnel of the state police who had duties such as city policing, VIP management and so on. READ | Bastar: CRPF tribal battalion to counter Maoists threat in Chhattisgarh While members of the state administration and the police call the DRG a “massive operational success”, activists working in the state object to the use of surrendered Maoists and locals in the battle “against their own”. [related-post] Watch Video: What's making news In May 2015, the Raman Singh government sanctioned 600 posts for the DRG. However, the district superintendents of police, who could create their ‘DRG teams’, didn’t go in for fresh recruitment. Instead, they chose their men from the existing pool of personnel at their command, including the controversial ‘sahayak arakshaks’ — assistant constables, many of whom had served as SPOs under the Salwa Judum until the Supreme Court struck it down in 2011. Among the ‘sahayak arakshaks’ were surrendered Maoists, those affected by Naxal violence and other locals. There are now 1,748 DRG personnel spread across eight districts of Chhattisgarh — seven in Bastar range and one in Rajnandgaon. Of these DRG men, 957 have undergone specialised training courses at the Counter Terrorism and Jungle Warfare School in Vairengte, Mizoram, with 350 more about to be sent there. Operationally, senior police officers said, the DRG has been a “game changer”. “The terrain in Bastar is difficult in the easiest of times. But the DRG personnel are locals who are familiar with the terrain, speak the local language and know the routes to take. Often during operations, troops have to spend days in a forest with limited food, but this endurance is already built into the local recruits,” D M Awasthi, Special DG Anti-Naxal Operations, told The Indian Express. The benefit from the DRG is more than just military, he said. “The idea that locals can get jobs, that there is some form of progress in the home of a local, is a big factor,” he added. Activists, however, said that the formation of the DRG was in contravention to the Supreme Court order, which had banned the Salwa Judum. A report by a fact-finding team of activists Sanjay Parate, Vineet Tiwari, Archana Prasad and Nandini Sundar, released this week and titled ‘Caught in an irresponsible war’, said, “Rather than following the Supreme Court’s directions, the Chhattisgarh government merely renamed the SPOs and called them Auxiliary Armed Forces. It has recently recruited more surrendered Maoists and other civilians under the name of District Reserve Group.” Social activist Bela Bhatia, who lives in Bastar, said, “I wonder where this demand for a Bastar battalion (of the CRPF) came from. Yes, there have been calls for employment, but there has been no demand for a battalion. In any case, in a place where people are already suffering the effects of immense militarisation, this is going to make it worse.” Bhatia said that with the DRG often being accused of taking part in fake encounters, rape and abuse, the police have ended up pitting the locals against one another. “In many of the cases that have emerged in the recent past, the allegations have been against locals and the DRG. Villagers who are victims of abuse often say they were attacked by those who spoke the local language. Many in the DRG are surrendered Maoists and, therefore, the villagers recognise them and have identified them. Even in the recent case of Madkam Hidme (where a tribal girl was killed in an alleged fake encounter in Sukma’s Gompad village on June 13), the villagers have identified the accused. They are all surrendered Maoists,” Bhatia said. The police, however, see most of these allegations as a reaction to the “effectiveness of the DRG”. Awasthi said: “I want to clarify that nobody is above the law, certainly not members of the DRG. If there are allegations and if proof emerges after an inquiry, they will have to face the same action as any other police officer. There is no room for any excessive use of force.”
