Villagers hand rebel to police

Midnapore, Sept 2: Residents guarding a West Midnapore village caught one among a group of Maoists while chasing away the rest of them.

The villagers of Pachakhali handed over Kalu Mahato, an action squad member of the Maoists in Jharkhand, to police.

Around 1am, the group of six Maoists was returning from Jhargram town on three motorcycles. The gang had gone there to extort money from a contractor, the police said.

“But they could not possibly enter the town because the joint forces were patrolling the area. So they took a road through Pachakhali on their way back to Jharkhand,” a police officer said. “The villagers guarding Pachakhali asked them to stop. But the six tried to turn back and escape. The villagers then threw stones at them and chased them,” the officer added.

Kalu, who was riding pillion, fell off the bike when the rebels tried to turn back. “We caught him immediately. We tied his hands and made him sit on the playground of a primary school in neighbouring Birdanga village,” said Mohanta Singh, a resident of Pachakhali. “We threw his revolver into a pond,” he added.

The other rebels fired in the air and escaped.

“Possibly, the Maoists were unaware about the villagers keeping vigil. That is why they took the road through Pachakhali,” the officer said.

The police said that during interrogation, Kalu had confessed that he belonged to a rebel squad in Jharkhand’s Ghatshila led by Samiran Hansda. The police said Kalu had told them that the six Maoists had planned to cross over to Jharkhand after extorting money from the contractor.

Pachakhali is 30km from the Jharkhand border and 2km from Radhanagar where villagers had chased away a group of 20 armed Maoists in July.

After the Radhanagar incident, residents of around 50 villages in West Midnapore formed defence groups called “gram bachao committees”. These groups guard villages against rebel attacks and fight against Maoist coercion and interference in the daily lives of villagers.


The Telegraph