Author: Varghese K George
Publication: Hindustan Times
Date: June 6, 2008
URL: http://www.hindustantimes.com/storypage/storypage.aspx?id=e7ab18ec-0119-40e1-9264-914b4d29c1f5
They are two of India's most wanted and between
them they command up to 20,000 trained Maoist guerrillas with a presence in
nearly 200 districts of the country.
For years Ganapathi, the general secretary
of the feared Communist Party of India (Maoist) and his deputy Kishenda, a
politburo member, were faceless. Today, Hindustan Times brings them to the
public for the first time.
The Maoists, described by PM Manmohan Singh
as the country's single-biggest security challenge, are accused of hundreds
of killings, kidnapping and looting in the vast swathes they control. Home
Ministry says they were responsible for the killing of 418 civilians and 214
security personnel in 2007. In 2006, the numbers were 501 and 133 respectively.
Ganapathi and Kishenda have been living secret
lives for decades, though not always in the huge expanse of jungles under
their complete control. Police in different states have had inputs about having
spotted them in Cochin, Rourkela, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Raipur.
The security agencies acquired the snaps six
months ago either through a mole in the Naxal hierarchy or from a seized computer
disk from a Naxal hideout in Bastar forests. The nearly 40,000 sq km expanse
of forests on Chhatisgarh's border with Orissa and Andhra Pradesh is home
for most number of Maoists - an estimated 10,000.
A highly placed source in the security establishment,
who shared the photographs with HT, said police in Chhattisgarh and Andhra
Pradesh verified their authenticity through secondary sources also.
The AP police had a two-decade-old snap of
Ganapathi and the latest one matched with it. A Raipur tour operator, who
has been a front for Maoists and arrested recently, confessed to have transported
both leaders on different occasions to the borders of Bastar jungles.
The snaps were extracted apparently from a
video of a party Congress held in the forests of Bihar's Jamui district in
February 2007. Over 100 delegates from 16 states had attended it.
