An Ominous Warning

During the siege, seven persons (three Maoists, two Ranvir Sena cadres andtwo police personnel) were killed. Subsequently, the Maoists executed nine ofthe abducted Ranvir Sena cadres. The Maoists, who had virtually taken control ofall entry and exit points of the town, also carried out synchronized attacks onthe district court, Police Lines, district armoury, the residence of the districtjudge, and the S. S. College, where a para-military forces camp had been set up.

Hours before the siege of Jehanabad town, about 50 kms from the state capitalPatna, the Maoists had disconnected electric supply to the city and, two daysearlier, had disconnected telephone services to the jail and Police Lines area.Clearly, as much as these indicate meticulous planning by the Maoists, they alsoreflect sweeping intelligence failures and security lapses.

Since the formation of the CPI-Maoist in September 2004 (after a unionbetween the erstwhile People’s War Group and Maoist Communist Centre), Maoistattacks have become more specific and target-oriented. The Jehanabad incursion,it needs mention, is not an isolated one. Indeed, it marks a ‘higher stage ofmilitarization’.

On November 11, just a few days before the Jehanabad siege, over a hundredMaoists had attacked a Home Guard training centre at Pachamba in the Giridihdistrict of neighbouring Jharkhand, killing five persons before decamping with183 rifles, two pistols and 2,500 cartridges. Earlier, on June 23, 2005, atleast 200-armed Maoists had targeted a Police Station and branches of the StateBank of India and the Central Bank of India in the Madhuban area of the EastChamparan district in Bihar, close to the Nepal border.

The Maoists had carried out a similar attack on the Koraput District armouryin Orissa on February 6, 2004, killing four security force personnel and lootingmore than 2,000 firearms. They had subsequently opened fire on the city PoliceStation, the Sadar (peri-urban) police camp, the office of theDistrict Superintendent of Police, the Treasury and the Orissa Special ArmedPolice Centre of the 3rd Battalion.

In all these incidents, ‘sympathisers’, constituting the people’s militiaor 'base force' in ‘revolutionary’ terminology, have supported the‘regular’ Maoist cadre. The Jehanabad attack is also a reiteration of theMaoist strategy of a protracted ‘People’s War’ and constituent principlethat seeks to surround cities from the countryside, where the communist-ledforces establish 'base areas' and 'liberated zones', expanding through thestages of the strategic defensive, the strategic equilibrium, and culminating inthe strategic offensive. As one commentator has noted,

…such incidents involving civilian population may be few for now, but they do point to the capabilities of the Maoist leadership in mobilising the masses and coordinating the movement of assault teams. More such actions can be anticipated. The Central Committee has called for another round of the Tactical Counter Offensive Campaign (TCOC). More dangerous is employing of the ‘mobile warfare tactics’ in these raids. Mobile warfare is a decisive stage in guerrilla war and if allowed to continue, Maoists will in a short time ‘liberate’ pockets of influence. Mobile warfare is a stage where the guerrilla force is in a commanding position and thestate forces find themselves on the defensive.

More alarming is the ground-level support that the CPI-Maoist now evidentlyhas within the ‘red map’, which covers at least 165 districts spread across14 states. The ‘Base Force’ experiment has also been successfully played outby the Nepalese Maoists over the past few years.

Within Bihar, the attack indicates increased Naxalite activity in southcentral Bihar and a gradual spread towards the northeastern part of the state.This upsurge has also been made possible by the Ranvir Sena’s decline in theMagadh region (Gaya, Nawada, Aurangabad and Jehanabad districts), which theyused to dominate earlier.

According to the ministry of home affairs data on Left Wing extremism, Biharwas the worst affected state in 2004, with Maoists active in 30 out of its 38districts, and with 155 killings between January and November 30, 2004, up from128 in 2003. A total of 93 people, including 22 civilians, 27 Security Force(SF) personnel and 44 Maoists, have died in year 2005, till November 20 (SATPdata). As far as operational areas are concerned, the CPI-Maoist has a presencein all parts of Bihar, with the primary support base located in the lower castesand poor peasantry.

The objective of the Jehanabad attack was multi-fold: to free their comradeslodged in the jail, including ‘state committee’ leader Ajay Kanu alias DevKumar; to abduct/kill Ranvir Sena activists; to loot arms and ammunition fromthe troops; and, most significantly, to send a signal to the authorities and thepeople that they were capable of carrying out such large-scale incursions. It isimportant to note, further, that, at the time of the attack, Bihar had beenunder governor’s rule – the state’s affairs being controlled directly bythe centre – for over nine months and a massive security exercise was underway for the conduct of the Assembly elections.

After having called for a boycott of the Assembly elections in Bihar, theCPI-Maoist had unexpectedly been lying low. This was the more significant, sincethe 57 constituencies in which elections were held on October 18 were spreadacross 12 Maoist-affected Districts in central and south Bihar. Provisionalreports indicate that there was a 45 per cent voter turnout, thus suggesting adefiance of the Maoists’ diktat. But the attack on the night of the thirdphase was clearly meant to send a message that the Maoists are strong enough tostrike. Bihar had a four-phased polling (October 18 and 26; November 13 and 19)for a total of 243 seats, out of which at least 50 constituencies are regardedas being vulnerable to Maoist violence. Incidentally, Jehanabad saw peacefulpolling on October 18 in the first phase.

State apathy to the Maoist dynamic in Bihar, over the years, has meant thatillegal arms factories are flourishing in many districts. There are over 1,500illegal arms manufacturing units in Bihar and most of them are located in theNalanda, Nawada, Gaya and Munger districts. A general breakdown of law andorder, the proliferation of criminal gangs and militias, the criminalisation ofpolitics and an ill-equipped police force has contributed to the continuousconsolidation of Naxalites in the state.

Law enforcement agencies, particularly the police, face an acute shortage ofmanpower and resources. For instance, there are currently 12,000 vacancies inthe state for posts of police constables. An Inspector General of Policeindicated in April 2005 that the force has been facing an severe deficiency ofsub-inspectors and constables, as no fresh appointments have been made after1994.

The Crime in India – 2003 report, published by the National CrimeRecords Bureau, indicates that Bihar has a ratio of 1:1,652 in terms of actualpolice strength to the estimated mid-year population of 2003, the worst in thecountry. By comparison, Andhra Pradesh has a ratio of 1:1052; Chhattisgarh,1:1061, Jharkhand (formerly part of Bihar), 1:1333; and Orissa, 1:1072.

According to a police official in Jehanabad, there is no separatecounter-insurgency wing, which is why all major offensives lose steam after awhile. The Special Task Force set up a few years ago to counter the Maoists haseither been engaged in VIP security or posted in ‘peaceful areas’. In asubmission before the Patna High Court earlier this year, the Bihar Policedisclosed that approximately 20,000 individuals, including politicians, presentand former bureaucrats and people from other walks of life, have been providedpolice house guards or bodyguards or both.

The 80,000-strong police force in Bihar also lacks access to modern weaponrylike anti-landmine vehicles, bulletproof vests and bomb disposal equipment.According to the Bihar Police Association, a majority of about 300 policestations, 92 police pickets and hundreds of police outposts in theMaoist-affected districts are facing severe infrastructure shortages. BiharPolice establishments and personnel have witnessed 43 Maoist attacks betweenJanuary 2003 and November 2005, in which over 150 police personnel have died andhundreds of firearms have been looted.

The Maoist ‘success’ at Jehanabad is bound to echo in other parts ofIndia with the rebels’ Central Committee having reportedly called for anotherround of their 'tactical counter offensive campaign' in ‘weak states’. TheJehanabad incident is an indication of, and a warning against, the continuousneglect of a critical aspect of governance – the state’s monopoly on the useof force.

In Bihar and elsewhere in places witnessing a retreat of governance, thestate has abdicated its responsibilities on this count. In Bihar, specifically,power is now overwhelmingly wielded by the upper caste landowners with theirmilitias, criminal syndicates in association with their political masters, or bythe Maoists – all of which are uniformly aligned against the authority of thestate and the interests of its citizenry. The loss of geographical space tosubversive and violent non-state actors will have to be reversed immediately ifthe state is to reclaim its authority and restore order.

Nihar Nayak Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management. Courtesy,the South Asia Intelligence Review of the South Asia Terrorism Portal