Author: Rajeev P I
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: February 2, 2005
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=63890
Bands of renegade Naxal outfits
kill for factional dons, most have names that begin with People's War
In the revolutionary lexicon of
a big chunk of Anantapur's Naxalite outfits, the class enemy has taken
an entirely different meaning. It now means the enemy of the local factionist
don hiring them to kill.
Anantapur police say there are only
six such outfits in the employ of factionists, but the Andhra Pradesh Civil
Liberties Committee (APCLC) has documented 11 bands of renegade Naxalites
on the prowl in Anantapur, for different factionist dons. That is besides
the many smaller and spurious ones that sport the Naxalite label, which
mostly sustain themselves by simple extortions.
The Naxalite label is important
here. It gives them added threat potential, and some very handy local legitimacy.
So, most of these outfits have names with the prefix People's War (PW).
On one side, they do the ordered
killing and terrorising for their respective patron dons. On the other,
they get into village disputes and occasionally help out with the money
and clout, which the don provides, to sustain vital local acceptance. Legitimacy,
they know, is the key to survival in this job.
For the dons, the Naxalites began
being an integral part of their squads since the mid and late 1990s. These
are experienced men who can obviously do the job better than lay recruits,
and are a force multiplier. Plus, the added bonus of their local credibility
and aura. So, if one don has a Naxalite band working for him, his rival
just can't afford not to have one for himself.
All this has put the real McCoy,
the People's War (Maoists) engaged in their bloody ideological war elsewhere
in Andhra, in a serious fix. ''We have absolutely nothing to do with them,
and we warn our cadre. But we take action only if our own genuine cadre
get into this,'' says Vara Vara Rao, official spokesman for the Maoists.
Among the renegade Naxal bands now
working solely for their respective factions are the People's War (Red
Star), which operates exclusively for the Congress dons, and the Telegu
Desam Party-owned People's War (ROC), the dreaded private hit squad of
the murdered don, MLA Paritala Ravi.
Vara Vara Rao cites Ravi's case
to illustrate how the Naxalite cadre are being won over by dons. ''Ravi
managed to get K Venkateswara Rao, who was our movement's state secretary,
give an impression that the movement must take care of Ravi and his family
since they had two martyrs for our cause-his father and brother. But once
Ravi's actual designs became clear, particularly after he used the movement
to plant a TV bomb and wipe out his rival's family without our consent,
we censured Rao, who was later expelled,'' he says.
Even Kondapalli Seetharamaiah (KS),
the Naxalite movement's legendary supremo here, was taken in by Ravi, says
Rao. ''We had to censure KS too, and strip him of all responsibilities
for this area, for his proximity to Ravi,'' he says.
The fall began for the Naxalite
movement here, in the early 1990s, with its first splinter squads starting
to fight for the dons controlling the very system that they had originally
sought to wipe out.
The splintering commenced with the
monolithic People's War of KS splitting into two over differences about
dilution of ideology and sidling upto factions. KS headed one splinter
group and his lieutenant Ganapathy the other. Paritala Ravi's TV bomb divided
the bigger KS group and it split to spawn the Vimukti Pattam of Vetti Muthyalu.
But Ravi soon got the latter to
split again and the PW Re-Organising Committee (ROC) was born. Soon, the
ROC itself split, one headed by Ravi's man Pothula Suresh who used it as
the MLA's own private death squad. The other ROC group, led by Ashok, split
into the PW (Liberation) group of Ranga Reddy. Within months, the Ashok
group split again and the PW (Red Star) headed by the then Congress MLA
Kanumkkala Chenna Reddy was born to fight TDP man Paritala Ravi's ROC band.
Not just the dons, but even the
police have apparently wisened up to the magic that the Naxalite tag had
in much of rural Andhra. ''Some years back, the then SP of Medak himself
floated an outfit called CPI-ML Praja Party, roping in renegades and surrendered
Naxalites. This was used to take on genuine Naxalite outfits, and punish
those helping them without bothering about legal niceties,'' says Vara
Vara Rao.
The bands often take on each other
in the course of their job. Often with deadly effect.
In 1998, factionist don Peddineni
Boya Narayana Swamy had used a 75-member squad from the KS group to finish
off seven members of the squad working for his rival Harichandra Prasad,
in Kasapuram. But like most professionals, the killer bands patch up quick,
even if for survival's sake.
Police records put the outcome of
this massacre very succinctly: ''Case was acquitted on 31/3/2004 as both
parties effected a compromise, and witnesses turned hostile in court''.
Says a senior police officer: ''Running
an effective faction with its influence structures, networks and hit squads
takes money and logistics. The factionist dons need to always keep finding
enough cash from all possible rackets and operations. This also means they
need the right henchmen to help take on their rivals, and it has to go
on and on. There's no retirement from factionism, only death.''