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Maoists kill 18 including former CM’s son in Jharkhand

	October 29, 2007

In the biggest ever civilian killing in Jharkhand, Maoist extremists struck on Oct. 27 and killed 18 persons including Anup Marandi, the younger son of former Chief Minister Babulal Mara¬ndi. Wearing CRPF uniforms, about 50 Naxalite gunmen struck at a cultural programme in Chikhadi village in Giridih district, spraying bullets indiscriminately. Four persons were injured in the incident.



“We thought they were CRPF personnel and had come to provide security. They gradually surrounded us and we thought it was a security cover but then they started firing at us,” a villager said.



Chief guest Nunulal Marandi escaped by mingling with the crowd.



“I saved my life by mingling with villagers. I shed my coat to hide my identity and walked to nearby Bihar and from there in¬formed the police about the incident,” Nunulal said.



Anup was married in June this year. Babulal was also expect¬ed to attend the programme but wasn’t able to. “My family has been the target of Maoists for a long time as we have been fight¬ing them and organising villagers against them. My brother and son committed the mistake of organising the programme late in the night”, a shocked Marandi said.



Announcing compensation for the victims, Chief Minister Madhu Koda said: “The families of those killed will be given Rs 1 lakh and one member of each family will be given a job. I have spoken to Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and sought his help in the combing operations. What happened tonight is very sad.



“This is an act of cowardice by Maoists and we will fight their nefarious activities,” he added.



Chikhadi is near the Jharkhand-Bihar border and police forces of both States have started a joint search for the kill¬ers.



Koda and the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) chief Shibu Soren visited the spot to console wailing relatives of those killed.



“Maoists can kill even a former CM’s kin,” a shocked Soren said, adding: “Village youth should be employed in police and training camps opened in remote areas.”



Observers say, the massacre is part of the Maoist Tactical Counter Offensive Campaign (TCOC) aimed at consolidating their stranglehold in Jharkhand and Bihar.



The victims were mostly tribals and their killing without any compunction, after the suspected target Nunulal Marandi fled the scene, is bound to become a point of discussion even among the Maoist leadership, which had all along been professing that the ‘revolutionary cadres’ would not target civilians but only `class enemies.’



The latest massacre comes close on the heels of the asser¬tion of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that the police forces should ‘redouble their efforts’ in controlling Naxalism. While addressing the police chiefs at the annual DGPs conference in Delhi on October 4, Dr. Singh emphasised a full-fledged security response to the problem.



In a meeting of their central committee held in January this year, the Maoists decided to continue the Tactical Counter Offen¬sive Campaign (TCOC) in ‘struggle areas.’



The killing of Jharkhand Mukti Morcha MP, Sunil Mahato on March 4, 2007 in East Singhbhum district was also carried out on similar lines. Mahato, a staunch opponent of Maoists, was watch¬ing a football match when the naxalites sneaked into the audience and opened fire.



In a week of judgements in cases involving terrorists, policemen, a former Minister and rioters, over 70 people were awarded imprisonment for life in four different cases. The crimes ranged from bomb blasts in Coimbatore to target BJP leader L.K. Advani, burning about ten persons alive during communal riots in Kanpur following the Babri Masjid demolition, murder of a pregnant poetess in Lucknow by a former Minister and his wife and the infamous Connaught Place fake encounter in which Delhi police personnel gunned down two innocent businessmen.



The curtains came down on the Coimbatore blasts trial on Friday, Oct. 26 with Special Judge K.Uthirapathy completing the awarding of sentences. At the end of the third and final day of the sentencing process, 43 people were sentenced to life, 15 to 13 years of rigorous imprisonment, 10 to ten-year term and two to seven year terms.



A court in Dehradun sentenced former Minister and Samajwadi Party MLA Amarmani Tripathi and his wife Madhumani to life im¬prisonment on Oct. 24, along with two others who had conspired to kill poetess Madhumita Shukla four years ago. The case was transferred to the Dehradun Court from Lucknow by the Supreme Court on a petition by Madhumita’s sister Nidhi Shukla that Amarmani Tripathi would use his political clout in Uttar Pradesh to influence the case.



In another landmark judgement, a Kanpur judge on Oct. 24 sentenced 15 accused to life imprisonment in a case related to the riots following the 1992 Babri Masjid demolition. About 1000 men had ransacked a house belonging to the minority community in a Kanpur locality and burnt 11 of the inmates alive.



A trial court in Delhi sentenced all the ten policemen including an Assistant Commissioner of Police S.S. Rathi to life imprisonment, holding them guilty of killing two innocent busi¬nessmen in cold-blood in Connaught Place, the heart of the na¬tional capital.