A TOP INDIAN terrorism expert has said that if Sri Lanka could defeat the LTTE after years of conflict, so can India in its fight against the Maoists rebels, The Tribune reported yesterday.
The Tribune news story filed from Kanker in Chhattisgarh, quoted top terrorism expert Brigadier (retd) BK Ponwar as saying that the recent defeat of the LTTE in Sri Lanka after a 30-year conflict has raised hopes that terrorism could be defeated militarily. "If Colombo can do it, we can also do it... the Bastar jungles are not that difficult," he said.
Ponwar heads Chhattisgarh’s first Counter-Terrorism and Jungle Warfare College in north Bastar, 145 km from state capital Raipur. At least, 39 policemen, including the Superintendent of Police Vinod Kumar Choubey, were killed in a gruesome guerrilla attack by the Maoists (commonly called Naxalites) in Rajnandgaon district on July 12.
Maoists have become more offensive in Chhattisg-arh as the state police recently breached the "Red Corridor" in its two northern districts, Sarguja and Jashpur, flushing out ‘red rebels’ from there. The "Red Corridor" runs through the dense forest belt from the Nepal border to Andhra Pradesh.
"If one does not follow traffic rules while driving, it may lead to an accident," said Ponwar emphasising that "similarly, if the police will not follow the basics of jungle warfare, they will continue to meet the same fate as they did on Sunday (July 12)... the policemen had just walked into a booby trap".
The incident had witnessed the highest-ever casualty that the security forces had suffered in a single day in the three-decade history of Naxalite violence in Chhattisgarh. The tragedy has shaken up the police.
The Kanker Jungle Warfare College, whose the motto is ‘Fight a guerrilla like a guerrilla’ has trained over 7,000 policemen, including officers from Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Orissa and Kerala. Of late, West Bengal has also started sending policemen here - perhaps after learning the lesson from the Lalgarh episode, ‘The Tribune’ story said.
The Gem and Jewellery Authority is turning a deaf ear to instructions by the Ratnapura Coordinating Committee to stop forthwith all gem mining activities in Kahangama on the banks of the Kaluganga.
The District Secretary H. W. Gunadasa, who is also Secretary of the Coordinating Committee said the practice has hitherto been for State institutions to follow decisions taken by the Committee. "However, the Gem and Jewellery Authority had failed to follow the Coordinating Committee’s instructions", Gunadasa said.
He said that it was the practice to auction sections of Kaluganga for gem mining, but several gem miners were dissatisfied with the manner the auctions were conducted recently and therefore several gem miners in Ratnapura protested to the Coordinating Committee to instruct the Gem and Jewellery Authority to call a halt to all mining activities in the area. He said that the District Coordinating Committee instructed the Gem and Jewellery Authority to conduct fresh auctions and call off all mining activities until such time.
Commenting on this, an official of the Authority said the auction was conducted according to conditions laid down by the Government and only if any of those conditions were breached, the Authority could order the miners to call off their activities.
However, many organisations and individuals engaged in gem mining in Ratnapura, were of opinion that mining in Kahangama in Kaluganga is being carried out contrary to laid down rules and regulations.
(Courtesy: The Island)
