Maoists thrash elderly couple for sending their son to school

Raipur: In yet another heartrending incident, Maoists subjected an elderly tribal couple in a remote village in Chhattisgarh’s conflict zone of Bastar, to inhuman torture for “making their son literate”.

The horrific incident comes close on the heels of the gory killing of a four-month-old infant by the ultras in another village in the region to avenge the escape of his father, whom they had abducted, the police said on Sunday.

In the latest incident, a group of 15 armed Maoists stormed the village of Khadka under the Bhanupratapur police station in Kanker district in the dead of the night of December 10 looking for Garu Salam, 24, a former special police officer.

“The rebels got infuriated when they could not find Garu in the village. They then asked his parents, village head Ghasiyaram Salam, 59, and his wife Sukku Bai, 54, to be present in the jan adalat, the kangaroo court, set up by them,” Bhanupratapur police station in-charge Bhavesh Saw told Deccan Chronicle on Sunday.

The Naxal court held the couple guilty of giving education to their son to make him eligible to get a job in the police department and ordered their thrashing whole night. “We were beaten black and blue with bamboo sticks and shoes by the ultras whole night. We had begged for mercy citing our old age, but in vain. We were let off with a warning not to enter the village again,” the couple in their FIR filed in the Bhanupratapur police station on Sunday, said.

The couple later walked around 25 km to reach Bhanupratapur on Sunday to file FIR. On December 7, Naxals lynched and buried an infant in front his mother in the village of Tadka in Bijapur district to teach his father a lesson for fleeing their custody.