Candid soul-searching: Naxal outfit admits lapses

Physical punishment to people in resolving civil disputes targeting policemen who are on unrelated duties, indiscriminate killing of police informers, burning of buses, trains and other public property should be avoided, the PWG circular issued recently said.

The candid soul-searching has led to admission of certain shortcomings, inadequacies and excesses that have crept into the organisation founded in 1980 by fiery Communist leader Kondapalli Seetharamaiah.

“Except those policemen who are on patrolling, intelligence gathering duties and indulgingin repression, others should not be attacked,” said PWG which considers police force as its main enemy.

The PWG, most dreaded among extremist organisations, has, of late, been spreading its tentacles in neighbouring Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa.

According to one estimate, over 1,000 people, mostly policemen, have fallen prey to Naxal violence in the last one decade.

The document, however, asserted that there would be no change in its policy of conducting raids on police stations to procure arms. “As far as possible, we do not aim at killing when policemen do not resist. But, even for picking up arms, places close to examination centres, religious functions where ordinary people can be harmed should not be chosen,” the circular said.

On frequent threats being issued to elected representatives, the PWG clarified that its policy was only to mobilise people to demand resignations of errant leaders who failed to keep up their election-eve promises.

“But in many instances, our own squads aredemanding resignations from these representatives. This is becoming something of a farce with these representatives staging a resignation drama in public and continuing as before,” the circular said.

Admitting that awarding physical punishment to people in civil disputes had resulted in several flaws, the Naxal outfit said “in some cases, the punishments have resulted in deaths. The basic fault is in the tendency to award physical punishment for all kinds of offences. We need to review this deeply.”

“Though we have written in our documents several times that there are flaws in this regard, the expected change has not taken place in practice. This should be corrected as early as possible,” it said.

The document comes against the backdrop of an independent initiative by the Committee of Concerned Citizens (CCC), headed by retired civil servant with human rights activists, journalists and academicians as members, which had held talks with representatives of PWG and State Government in an effort todemocratise the system and reduce violence in society.

The PWG, taking a critical view of the CCC’s perceptions about revolutionary struggles, said “They have wrong notions about our movement because of misinformation. We have also not been able to build relationships with democrats and intellectuals. It is our task to explain to them the realities of our movement.”

Referring to the main criticism that it was eliminating innocents branding them as police informers, the PWG said “The punishment (against identified informer) should not be arbitrary. The decision should be left to people and degree of punishment should be dependent on circumstances under which the offence was committed.”

The document revealed that the Naxal outfit had stopped blowing up railway tracks since it would put peoples’ lives at risk. “We have stopped blowing up railway tracks because we lack required expertise to carry out such operations without loss of life.”

Continuing its prescription of “dos and don’ts” to itsarmed squads, the PWG document said “no form of struggle should be selected casually without giving sufficient thought to the extent of loss of life it can cause. The `temporary setback to the enemy’ should not be sole criterion to decide the form of struggle.”

The PWG, which encourages occupation of lands particularly in Telangana region, made a critical review of its policy in this regard and came out with a set of norms.

In case of landlord families who are solely dependent on lands for livelihood, sufficient land should be left with them and the rest should be occupied while lands, belonging to those landlords having industries in urban centres, should be fully occupied, the circular said.

However, lands belonging to salaried class people should not be occupied, it said. The PWG asked its squad area committees to make a comprehensive review of instances of meting out brutal physical punishment while resolving civil disputes in rural areas so that village-level committees could be educated properlyin this regard.