Volume 2, No. 10, October 2001

Warangal, a district of North Telangana, has been facing acute police repression since the last few years. The police are straining every nerve to annihilate the guerrilla squads and platoons, and to try and demoralise the full-time activists, and malign the movement.

In the villages they are spreading a wide informer net work. In some villages they have up to 10 in number. They are being provided with walkie-talkies and cellphones. They are increasing the number of telephones, and are trying to obtain information through many sources. The Special Investigation Bureau (SIB), the Special police, and the officials are all trying to establish separate channels. All small and big towns are being regularly searched. Streets, houses and vehicles are been searched regularly. For this they deploy hundreds of police. With a view to suppress the various mass movements, they are arresting leaders of various mass organisations like, the Ryot Seva Samiti, the Democratic Teachers’ Front, and forcing them through torture to accept that they have connections with People’s War. The police falsely propagate that they get funds from the PW, and that they go to the jungles to take their guidance. They also propagate that they do reconnaissance and give information to the PW, and that they are supplying materials, and working as couriers, etc., After inflicting severe tortures on them, they are forcibly making them resign from the mass organisations, and make them issue statements that in fact the mass organisations has connections with the PW. Anyone who may start their own organistaion to solve their demands, has to face such repressive measures of the police. This is happening to many mass organisations in the Warangal towns and in the rural areas. Apart from these tortures some are even sent to the jails.

In the name of counseling, through their cultural organisations, and by their pamphlets, the police are seeking to malign the movement on a big scale. To create confusion, the police are distributing pamphlets in the name of the party itself. They are "adopting " some villages and are undertaking some reforms in a small way but are doing enormous propaganda about it. In the name of building "Maitri Sanghams"(friendship associations), they are increasing their informer network. In the name of the killed policemen they are putting up some water stalls (in summer), and holding some sports competitions, and forcing business associations to give press statements paying homage to "police martyrs". They are helping the surrendered naxalites to get loans, auto-rickshaws, etc., in the name of rehabilitation schemes. Those who went to surrender were not immediately released but put in prison. After getting a large number, they are producing them before journalists, making it look as though a big chunk have suddenly come out, giving the impression that the party has now become weak.

The Police forces became paranoid, after the announcement of the PGA. Combing operations were intensified. With the help of people, the PGA forces are able to retreat safely and fight back the police forces inflicting some losses too. There have been some losses to PGA forces too.

On the one side they are doing the drama of counseling and on the other, they are harassing and torturing the relatives of the underground cadre. As a result some have committed suicide. In Nallabelli Mandal, a dalit youth, Sankar, committed suicide, as the police harassed him continuously after his sister joined the PGA. In the Regonda Mandal of Gore Kottapalle the police hunted down an ex activist. As a result, fearing torture in the event of arrest, he committed suicide. In Atmakur Mandal, an ex-activist of Venkatapuram village committed suicide after severe torture in the month of February.

In the name of arresting Gram Rajya Committee members, they have arrested in forty villages, 3 to 30 members in each of the villages.

As is his wont, Chandrababu is introducing a plethora of schemes, viz., Janmabhhoomi, Pacchhadanam (Greenery), Parisubrata (Hygiene), etc. As with their Master, so also their servants.. The police are also imitating their political masters, who earlier came to the villages only with bullets, are now coming also with sugar coated bullets. This new tactic of forming Maitri-Sanghams has been started by the police from mid 2000. The police pose as if they are their friends and protectors. That they are committed to solve their problems. In NT, this drama has already stared. In this process, they are "adopting " some villages. In those villages they are distributing slates and slate pencils to school children. They are conducting some eye-camps, distributing spectacles to villagers, conducting some panchayats to solve the problems among the people, and trying to sell to those who can pay a lesser amount, the lands which became fallow after they were seized from the land-lords. Also, tournaments were being conducted and youth are being taken to Hyderabad to show that how Chandrababu is developing the hi-tech city. They propagate that if the villages are free of the naxalites, their villages could see many developmental activities like-roads, communication facilities, and education facilities... They promise that the youth will be provided self-employment, and that they will completely eradicate illiteracy. They are providing medicines for animals. Shedding crocodile’s tears over the plight of tribals that they do not have sufficient clothing, police have been distributing clothes.

Till now there has been much repression on the people in those places where they seized the landlords’ patta lands and fruit groves. The police tried their best to get them cultivated by landlords. As it failed, they are now telling the people that they can till those lands, and utilise the groves, but pay at least some amount as compensation to land lords by parting with some profit of the product. This is a new ploy that is being adopted by the police now.

First they formed these sanghams in the towns in several bastis with 15-30 persons comprising of politicians and anti-people persons, etc. Later they selected some strong villages in which the police had a good network and started these sangams. Then they forced ex-activists and women to join the sanghams. In some villages, they formed such sanghams secretly too, using them to get information about the PW party and the PGA.

Though the police’ s aims are very clear about why they are forming these sanghams, initially they tell people that goondaism could be restricted in the villages, that illegal arrack called ‘gudumba’ could be stopped, and also people can solve their problems. But after formation, the police are giving blanket police powers to these sanghams, and they begin to do what the police normally do to the people. Slowly this is becoming a front organisation for counter-insurgency intelligence collections. These sanghams enjoy police powers, and are gradually taking the shape of vigilante groups.

Adoption of Villages:

So far it has started, in the Warangal range. Here, they took 500 villages for "adoption". In Adilabad they have taken 130 villages. The purpose of this adoption technique is very clear from day one. They do some reformist activity and they propagate that they should keep away form the naxalites, other wise there would be no development. In one village when police found that the transformer was not working they called the Transco officials and threatened to get the transformer repaired immediately. Thus while on the one hand, they are continuing with the killings in the name of encounters, making arrests, illegal detentions, and inhuman tortures, on the other, they are trying to build up their image through a lot of propaganda that the police are their friends and not the revolutionaries.

In spite of all these attempts of the police their successes have been limited because of the deep roots of the Party amongst the masses. The masses can distinguish between fact and fiction; and between good and bad.

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