Sheng Tung, Chi Hsi

An attack, similar in scale and execution to the Koraput incident of February 6, 2004, inOrissa, and the Surguja incident of May 7, 2005, in Chhattisgarh, was staged bythe Naxalites of the Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) on June 23, 2005, in the Madhuban block of East Champaran district of Bihar. In a synchronised fashion, a large group of Naxalites attacked close to nine places in the area, including the police station, block office, post office, two banks and a petrol pump, besides the homes of Rashtriya Janata Dal Member of Parliament from the Sheohar constituency, Sitaram Singh, and two of his supporters.

In the resultant gun-battle following the attack, which spilled into the neighbouring Sheohar and Sitamarhi districts, twentyNaxalites, four security force personnel and two civilians were killed, including MoiuddinMian, an 'area commander' of the erstwhile Maoist Communist Centre (MCC).

Apart from the intensity of the attack, alarm was also raised when senior state police officials confirmed that Nepalese Maoists were also involved in the attack. Bihar Director-General of Police(DGP), Ashish Ranjan Sinha, pointed to persons with 'Mongoloid features' among the attackers, adding, "we have no clear evidence yet to show that it was a joint operation, but it cannot be ruled out." Officials at thecentre, however, have tried to downplay the possibility of involvement of Nepalese Maoists arguing that all the Naxalite posters and pamphlets found at the incident site were in Hindi and the literature seized was either in Maithili or Bhojpuri (local dialects).

Although the active involvement of Nepalese Maoists in the attack remains disputed, their growing co-operation with the Naxalites cannot be denied. In 2004, both groups had formed a 'Bihar-Nepal Border Co-ordination Committee' and this co-ordination has often involved sheltering each other's cadres and sharing expertise. On June 22, 2005, for instance, the Indian police arrested four Nepalese Maoists, identified as 'Battalion Commander' of the '16th Brigade' NirmalBishwokarma, 'Dhanusha district Committee' member Raju Mandal, Prakash Sahani and 'section commander' AnilRai, who were undergoing treatment at a private clinic in Darbhanga in Bihar. This was only the latest in a string of arrests of Nepalese Maoists in Bihar, dating back to February 2003.

The debate over the involvement of the Nepalese Maoists in the Madhuban attack is, however, at best a distraction from the real problem at hand, and that is the increasing clout of the Naxalites in Bihar. In this, the rebels have realized the classic Maoist dictum,"Sheng Tung, Chi Hsi": "Uproar [in the] East; Strike [in the] West", articulating the principles of distraction on the one hand and concentration on the other. Even as the state's efforts were concentrated in the 'worst affected' southern districts, the Maoists had consolidated their presence in the northern border areas, and the attack at Madhuban was essentially an open declaration of this consolidation.

Apart from the traditional stronghold districts of Patna, Gaya, Aurangabad,Arwal, Jehanabad, Rohtas, Jamui, Bhojpur and Kaimur in South and Central Bihar - in the vicinity of the affected districts of Jharkhand - the CPI-Maoist is increasingly establishing its presence in the northern districts of WestChamparan, East Champaran, Sheohar, Sitamarhi, Madhubani, Muzzaffarpur and Darbangha districts, neighbouring Maoist-affected areas in Nepal.

This extension has been far from invisible. After the Madhuban attack, Vinay Kumar, District Magistrate of East Champaran admitted that, "for the last two to three years, Naxalites have been trying to establish a base in these parts. " It was in 2001 that the Maoists marked their presence in Sheohar district for the first time, when they attacked the Dekuli Police Station and decamped with six rifles and a large amount of ammunition. In January 2002, they attacked the police outpost in Uktha in Sitamarhi district; in December 2003, in a joint operation by Sheohar and Sitamarhi police personnel, threeNaxalites, including the 'area commander' Satyam, were killed in the Barahi village inSitamarhi. The Naxalite influence across the northern areas can be gauged by the fact that, following the recent incidents in EastChamparan, the Sitamarhi District Superintendent of Police sounded a red alert in all 22 police stations in his jurisdiction, warning them of a possible Naxalite attack on any of the stations.

The Union Government has also recently confirmed the growing Naxalite presence in the East Champaran district by placing the district under the Security Related Expenditure(SRE) scheme. To enable the States to undertake more effective anti-Naxalite operations, the Ministry of Home Affairs "reimburses 75-100 per cent of the expenditure incurred on security related items." The scheme, which commenced on April 1, 1996, currently covers 76 districts in nine States. Apart from the East Champaran district, the other districts under the scheme in Bihar areAurangabad, Gaya, Jehanabad, Rohtas, Nalanda, Patna, Bhojpur, Kaimur, WestChamparan, Sitamarhi, Arwal, Nawada and Jamui.

The spread of left wing extremism in Bihar has been enormously facilitated by the sheer and endemic lack of human development, a crumbling State administrative machinery, and decaying infrastructure. The Naxalites have taken advantage of this widespread 'retreat of governance', not only in establishing a network of extortion, imposing 'levies' and 'revolutionary taxes', but also initiating 'developmental works' in some areas. In theImamganj, Dumuriya, Koti and Barachhatti areas of Gaya district, for instance, the Maoists are developing small-scale irrigation projects; in Khajura village of the Dumuriya Block, they have been involved in the construction of a small dam. The erstwhile MCC had earlier declared the formation of a 'guerilla zone' in the Imamganj area; Dumuria lies adjacent to it.

Within this context, the involvement of Nepalese Maoists in an incident or incidents in Bihar is, at worst, a peripheral concern. The Naxalite problem is essentially an internal security issue and nothing can dilute the State Government's responsibility to maintain law and order in its districts. Regrettably, Naxalite violence in Bihar overlays a much wider breakdown of the criminal justice system, and the State has persistently neglected issues of policing and the need to develop adequate capacities of response to various challenges of internal security. The Crime in India - 2003 report, published by the National Crime Records Bureau, indicates that Bihar has a ratio of 1:1652 in terms of actual police strength to the estimated mid-year population of 2003, the worst in the country. By comparison, Andhra Pradesh has a ratio of 1:1052;Chhattisgarh, 1:1061, Jharkhand (which was formerly part of Bihar), 1:1333; andOrissa, 1:1072. Sections of the Bihar Police continue to use the antiquated World War I vintage bolt-action .303 rifles and other obsolete equipment, as compared to the Japanese-made Pump Action Single Barrel Gun and sophisticated Chinese-made communication equipment that was seized from the Naxalites after the encounter in EastChamparan. On June 11, 2005, DGP Sinha announced that the Union Government had approved an INR 1.02 billion plan to modernize the Bihar police. Unfortunately, considering the lackadaisical State bureaucracy, the effects of this largesse will, at best, be uncertain.

In the meanwhile, the Maoist consolidation continues, not only in terms of territory, but in dealing effectively with past turf wars and internecine struggles. The Ministry of Home Affairs Annual Report 2004-2005 had noted that, in 2004, "In Bihar the Naxal violence as well as deaths increased significantly by over 29 per cent and about 34 per cent respectively mainly on account of increasing belligerence of the CPML-PW that clashed extensively, alongside theMCCI, with the CPML (Liberation)". 

It is significant that, at the beginning of year 2005, the CPI-Maoist released a statement declaring a unilateral ceasefire with the CPI-ML (Liberation) and this declaration was again reiterated on May 25. According to the statement, the ceasefire decision had been taken "to stop the loss being suffered by the allies and concentrate on the larger objective of the Naxal movement and to fight the class enemies." It is this 'larger objective' that had led the People's War Group(PWG) and the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) to merge in September 2004 - and the consequences of this merger are currently being felt across the entire Naxalite belt along India's eastern board.

Regrettably, while the rebels become more focused and coordinated in their activities across wide geographical areas of the country - and synchronize their activities with sympathetic groups abroad, including the Nepalese Maoists - there is little evidence of comparable coordination or sense of shared purpose across the afflicted States, each of which continues to pursue arbitrary, often contradictory, and almost uniformly ineffective, patterns of response. 

Saji Cherian is Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management.Courtesy, the South Asia Intelligence Review of the South Asia Terrorism Portal.