Maoists’ latest target:Andhra-Orissa border

The murder of former cricketer Rajendra Sahu at Gothalpadar village in Rayagada district of Orissa on May 16 is one such instance.

Police inspector Indramani Behera of Gunupur police station, where the case was registered, said Sahu’s only mistake could be that he was seen talking to some Congress party workers in the village. “It is a lie that he was a police informer. Police wouldn’t even think of using him as an informer, as his father was killed by Maoists in 2002 on the same pretext. From my investigation I conclude that he was seen with political workers; someone didn’t like that and he paid the price,” Behera said.

Rayagada district Superintendent of Police Ashish Kumar Singh added: “In the last eight months there have been several such killings in border areas touching Visakhapatanam, Vizianagaram and Srikakulam districts of Andhra Pradesh. Notes left behind by the killers claim that they were police informants, which is absolutely false. They were killed for other reasons. In two instances in Rayagada district, people were killed at random because the fear of Maoists was waning in that particular area.”

The killings are occurring in the border areas spread over Khammam, Vizag, Vizianagaram and East Godavari of Andhra Pradesh and Malkangiri, Koratpat, Gajapati, Rayagada and Ganjam districts of Orissa.

With very few areas left under their influence on the Andhra-Orissa border, the Maoists have started eliminating former sympathisers and their friends, suspecting them to be police informers. “They are killing their own people. Some of them don’t even hold any position in their organisational set-up, but because they are in the know of things, they are eliminated for fear that they might inform the police,” said an officer with AP police’s Special Intelligence Branch.

While the Maoists’ tactics have created an atmosphere of terror and suspicion in the border areas, inside Andhra Pradesh, the Maoists have dug their own grave by resorting to such tactics.

In 2003, after the Maoists killed 13 persons in a single day and nine the following day in Nizamabad district, accusing them of being police informers, the entire tribal and scheduled caste population on whom the Naxals depended for help, turned against them. “In fact, a few months after this incident, the Maoists were totally wiped out of the area because they didn’t have local support. That district is now off the Naxal map,” an official said.

On the Andhra side, the Naxal movement is still present in Vizag, Vizianagaram, East Godavari and Khammam districts. Vizag and Khammam continue to witness violent attacks and random killings.

Police officers said that the border area was more prone to random killings because of the contiguous hilly terrain on both sides of the border.