Train terror puts India's Maoists on defensive
By Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - Despite a string of successful attacks in recent weeks, India's
Maoists are on the defensive. A horrific train crash, which they are believed
to have triggered, has evoked widespread condemnation, including from those who
the government describes as "Maoist sympathizers".
Public outrage over the high casualties - about 148 people were killed and over
200 injured - seems to have prompted the Maoists to distance themselves from
the attack.
Early on Friday morning, the Mumbai-bound Jnaneshwari Express derailed at
Jhagram in West Bengal's West Midnapore district, a Maoist stronghold. A few
minutes later, a speeding freight train
running in the opposite direction hit carriages of the derailed train that had
fallen on the parallel track.
With the disaster occurring just days before local elections in West Bengal,
multiple theories have surfaced over who might have done it. Railway Minister
Mamata Banerjee's Trinamul Congress has accused its main rival, the Communist
Party of India-Marxists (CPI-M), which rules West Bengal, of sabotaging the
railway tracks. Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram has said that "the needle
of suspicion points to the Maoists or their frontal organizations".
Topmost on the list of suspects is the the People's Committee against Police
Atrocities (PCAPA), which has a strong presence in the area. A mass tribal
forum, which is said to be backed by the Maoists, the PCAPA was at the
forefront of the resistance at Lalgarh in 2008. In October last year it
announced that it was taking up armed struggle.
While some have pointed out that the attack was uncharacteristic of the
Maoists, the argument being that they do not target civilians, evidence
suggests otherwise.
Figures submitted by the Chhattisgarh government to the Supreme Court indicates
that over the past three years Maoists have killed as many civilians as they
have security forces personnel. Civilians in Maoist controlled areas have been
killed for allegedly acting as police informers or co-operating with the
government.
A fortnight ago, Maoists indicated that civilians were fair game while they
targeted security forces. They blew up a private passenger bus in
Chhattisgarh's Dantewada district killing 31 people, mainly civilians. Under
pressure, a senior Maoist leader in the south Dandakaranya region said then
that civilian deaths "could not be helped". The bus, he pointed out, was
carrying special police officers. Indeed, some 30 such officers, returning from
combing operations in the Dantewada forests, were taking a ride back to the
camp in the bus.
Friday's attack on the Jnaneshwari Express provided the Maoists with no such
excuse. The train was a passenger train. They have not been able to explain
away the civilian deaths as "collateral damage".
This is not the first time that the Maoists have targeted a train. Maoists
routinely target infrastructure, blowing up railway tracks, telecom towers and
power lines. The railways have been a particular target. They remove fishplates
on tracks causing trains to derail. They have burnt down railway stations, even
held trains hostage for several hours. But these acts were aimed at showing
their capacity for damaging infrastructure or paralyzing the movement of trains
on busy routes for hours. Rarely have these assaults resulted in death.
Friday's derailment was different. The death toll was very high. Television
footage of lifeless bodies of children being extracted from mangled coaches has
triggered public anger against the Maoists like never before. Even rights
activists, normally soft on the Maoists, have come down heavily, describing the
attack as reprehensible. "If the Maoists did indeed carry out the attack, they
must explain their action. They must explain why civilians were targeted,"
Supreme Court advocate Prashant Bhushan, regarded a "Maoist sympathiser" by the
government, told Asia Times Online.
Rarely have the Maoists distanced themselves from attacks they have carried
out. And rarely have they seen the need to explain themselves or gone on the
defensive mode. The crash at Jhagram was different.
As the death toll skyrocketed, Maoist leaders usually willing to talk to the
media switched off their mobile phones. First they went on an offensive. "We
had no knowledge of the attack on the train. Our people did not do it ... It
was the handiwork of CPM goons. It was a conspiracy hatched by the CPM," said
Asit Mahato, spokesperson for the PCAPA.
As the full extent of the tragedy at Jhagram unfolded, the Maoists went on the
defensive, even coming up with an apology. Bapi Mahato, a PCAPA leader,
admitted to the sabotage but claimed it was a mistake. "We're sorry," he told
the Indian Express. "We never wanted these innocent civilians to die. Trust me,
we targeted the goods train. But somehow, we were fed wrong information that
the goods train would cross through this track and we removed Pandrol clips
[springs used to fix the rail to the sleeper] from a long stretch. We didn't
want to harm civilians. There must have been some miscalculation."
A section of Maoists have said that if the sabotage was indeed their handiwork
then the "rogue rebels" would be punished. "Anybody, even if they are found
close to us, will be punished if their involvement is proved beyond doubt,"
Akaash, a top Maoist leader, told the BBC.
It is possible that the death of so many civilians was not intended. The
Maoists might not have expected their sabotage of the railtrack at Jhagram to
set off a crash of such proportions or to result in such a high number of
casualties. It is also possible that their target was the freight train that
followed.
Still, none of these explanations will get them off the hook. Their choice of
armed struggle to fight the state might have drawn international attention to
the cause they espouse, but this is not without its drawbacks. Violence doesn't
always go according to a pre-written script.
It is likely the Maoists sabotaged the railway track at Jhagram to mark the
start of a "black week" in the states of West Bengal, Jharkhand, Orissa,
Chhattisgarh and Bihar and hoped that a train derailment would signal to the
world that even the state's heightened security during the period would not
deter them from carrying out an attack.
What they ended up signaling is that their so-called "people's war" is not
about protecting the interests of people but about unleashing mindless
violence.
Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in
Bangalore.
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