Bastar (Chhattisgarh): Stung by the parallel government set up by the Maoists, the Chhattisgarh government has initiated a massive retraining programme in its counter-terrorism and jungle warfare school to create a combat-ready special police force.
Some Chhattisgarh police commandos trained in the school have already gone into action, flushing out Maoist guerillas in the Dandakaranya jungles. Moving in the direction of fire, they captured two Maoist guerillas.
Many such battles are being fought every day in the Maoist Red Corridor, which stretches from Bihar to Andhra Pradesh and the police commandos are now winning some of them.
Set up in August last year, the school trains over 3,000 police commandos every year. The Counter-Terrorism and Jungle Warfare School was set up by Brig Bansi Kumar Ponwar after retiring as Director of the Army's jungle warfare school in Mizoram.
"My motto is to go and fight a guerilla like a guerilla in his den. Not sitting in one police station and waiting for him to attack. You will be destroyed in that manner," says Brig Ponwar.
Brig Ponwar says a detailed concept plan is already on the table: "It is in the process of being put in place and at present it is not in place. For example, if you have a company operating base in one place, you carry out patrolling and then go to a nearby town and then gradually once your authority has been established, you establish another base there."
"And then you move on further. That is how gradually once you have established the base, then the road construction, health centre, public distribution and all other administrative machinery can come into place. At present, it is non-existent. When it is non-existent, the Naxal leadership is saying that they are the government there," he adds.
The first step in countering the Maoist Janatana Sarkar is to militarily reverse the situation. By sending in well-trained police commandos to wage jungle warfare against the Maoist guerillas.
"The ideology that they are propagating, they are capitalising on the lack of governance. And saying that they will provide you the governance," Brig Ponwar says, adding that the intention of the state government and the Central government would be to replace the red flag with the 'tri-colour'.
The helidrome at the jungle warfare college was built by literally flattening the top of a hill, and it is from there that battle-ready police commandos will be airlifted 120 km south to Abujmaj in the Dandakaranya forest to flush out the Maoists.
(With Vanaja in Bastar)
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