“Monsoon Operation’ Focuses On Surrender Of Top Maoists: Cops

The counterinsurgency strategy for the current monsoon focuses on wooing the top Maoists to surrender through their family members or their ex-colleagues, the police officer told this newspaper, requesting not to be quoted.

The strategy has yielded the surrender of more than a dozen senior Maoists in Bastar in the last couple of weeks, he added.

As a part of the strategy, the panchayat members in the Naxal-infested areas in Bastar have been encouraged to approach the family members of the senior Maoists hailing from their areas to woo them to surrender and join the mainstream of the society, he said.

The security forces have also launched a campaign to generate awareness on the new rehabilitation policy of the state government for the surrendered Maoists to lure other ultras to give up arms and start life afresh by taking advantage of the policy, the police officer said.

“During monsoon, the remote forested villages in Bastar remain cut off from the rest of the world due to the flash floods in the rivers, wild streams and rivulets in the hilly areas. It is practically not possible to launch ground-level offensives against the Maoists in these areas. That is the reason why there used to be an undeclared ceasefire between security personnel and Maoists during every monsoon earlier”, the police officer said.

Hence, the ‘Monsoon Operation’ focused on the surrender of top Maoists in Bastar, he added.

However, anti-Naxal operations are also being carried out on the basis of intelligence inputs on the presence of Maoists at a certain place after analyzing the feasibility of the operation in this condition, he said.

The Union home minister Amit Shah had earlier announced that the anti-Naxal operations would continue uninterrupted during the monsoon in Bastar.