South Asia Terrorism Portal

Tactical Reprisals
Deepak Kumar Nayak
Research Associate; Institute for Conflict Management

On July 12, 2019, Nalluri Srinivas Rao (40), a leader of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), the ruling party in the neighbouring state of Telangana, was allegedly bludgeoned to death with a boulder by Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) cadres at Puttapadu village in the Sukma District of Chhattisgarh. Srinivas was allegedly abducted by a 15-member Maoist team from his house in Kothur village under Charla Mandal (administrative sub-division) in the Bhadrachalam agency of Bhadradri-Kothagudem District, Telangana, on July 8.

A letter signed by Saradakka aka Jajjari aka Sammakka aka Sarakka, ‘secretary’ of the CPI-Maoist ‘Charla-Sabari area committee’, left behind at the site of the killing, alleged that Srinivas was working in tandem with the Police and giving information about Maoist movements to the Police. The Maoists also alleged in the note, “Rao had a close nexus with Special Branch police and campaigned against the Maoist party.”

Interestingly, the letter also alleged that Srinivas had grabbed land from Adivasis (tribals), and had been tipping off State intelligence units, resulting in the arrest of some civil rights' activists. However, on July 10, two days after the abduction, pamphlets by the Adivasi associations surfaced at Tegada, Kaliveru, Satyanarayanapuram, R. Kothagudem, Kudunur, Chintaguppa and Lenin Colony villages in Charla Mandal in the Bhadradri Kothagudem District stating,

This incident of killing of a political leader has several precedents in the trajectory of Maoist violence. Indeed, a spurt in political killings has been witnessed in Naxal [Left Wing Extremism, LWE] violence across the country. In the current year itself, such incidents include:

June 19: CPI-Maoist cadres killed Santosh Punem, a Samajwadi Party (SP) leader, after abducting him in the Bijapur District of Chhattisgarh. Santosh, a contractor by profession, was abducted by the Maoists from his construction site situated in Marimalla village under the Ilmidi Police Station area. The road between Lodhed and Marimalla was under construction under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojna (PMGSY, Prime Minister’s Village Roads Plan) scheme, and Punem had gone to supervise this work when he was abducted and killed.

May 25: An Indian National Congress (INC) leader was hacked to death by CPI-Maoist cadres at Kistapar under the Bhairamgarh Police Station in Bijapur District, Chhattisgarh. The deceased, identified as Sahadev Samrath (30), was dragged out of his house and hacked by the Maoists just a few kilometres away from the local Police Station. He was also branded a ‘police informer’ by the Maoists.

April 9: A Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) legislator from the Bastar region, Bhima Mandavi (40) and his four security personnel were killed, as Maoist cadres targeted the convoy in which he was travelling, in a forested patch near Nakulnar Village in the Kuwakonda Tehsil (revenue unit) in the Dantewada District of Chhattisgarh. Mandavi was the elected Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) from Dantewada in December 2018, and was the only BJP MLA in the Bastar Division, since 2003.

According to partial data collated by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), at least four political leaders have been killed in five incidents of Maoist attack on political leadership across India since the beginning of 2019 (data till July 21, 2019). During the corresponding period in 2018, no such incident was registered. However, at least two political leaders were killed in one incident in the remaining period of 2018. On September 23, 2018, CPI-Maoist cadres gunned down Kidari Sarveswara Rao, an MLA from the ruling Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and Siveru Soma, a former MLA, also belonging to TDP, near Livitiput village in Dumbriguda Mandal in the agency area of the Visakhapatnam District of Andhra Pradesh.

At least 152 political leaders have been killed in 195 incidents of Maoist attacks on the leadership across India since the time of CPI-Maoist’s formation in 2004 (data till July 21, 2019). At peak in 2009, the number of such incidents stood at 44, in which at least 31 political leaders were assassinated by the Naxalites.

An overview of the geographical distribution of such incidents indicates that, since the formation of CPI-Maoist, West Bengal has registered at least 74 incidents of attacks on political leaders, resulting in 62 fatalities, and ranked first among eight States where such incidents were recorded over this period. Andhra Pradesh, with 32 such incidents and 21 fatalities, ranked second; Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, with 28 such incidents each, and 27 and 21 fatalities, respectively, ranked third; Bihar and Odisha, with 14 such incidents each, and five and 12 fatalities, respectively, ranked fourth; Maharashtra, with four incidents and three fatalities, ranked fifth; and Karnataka, with one such incident and one fatality, was sixth.

Prominently, in 1998, cadres of the Communist Party of India (Marxist Leninist) – People’s War (also, the People’s War Group, PWG) carried out an attack targeting the then Chief Minister, N. Chandrababu Naidu, while he was campaigning for the Metpally Assembly by-election near Kathlapur village in the Karimnagar District of Andhra Pradesh. Naidu survived the attack, but Police personnel present on the spot sustained severe injuries.

Importantly, the worst ever attack by the Maoists targeting the political leadership, across all Maoist affected regions in India, was the May 25, 2013, ambush in which 29 persons were killed, and another 30 injured, some of them critically, in the swarming attack by Maoist cadres in the Darbha Ghati region of Sukma District, Chhattisgarh. Five INC leaders, eight INC workers, and eight SF personnel were among 29 the persons killed. The INC leaders killed included Mahendra Karma, senior Congress leader and the controversial architect of the armed Salwa Judum (anti-Maoist ‘people’s movement’ in Chhattisgarh); the then INC state President, Nandkumar Patel; his son Dinesh Patel, the then Youth Congress leader; former MLA Uday Mudaliyar; and former Union Minister Vidya Charan Shukla. The Maoists who targeted their political victims alone, reportedly did not execute the Policemen after the crossfire ended. The Darbha Ghati attack wiped out a major section of the then State Congress leadership.

High-profile ambushes targeting political leaders help the Maoists energise their dispirited cadres, attract new cadres to their ranks, and reinforce their waning influence. Further, the Maoists justify such killings, claiming they have brought the perpetrators of crimes against the people to justice.

On July 10, 2019, the Union Minister of State for Home Affairs, G. Kishan Reddy, replying to a question in the Lok Sabha (Lower House of India’s Parliament), claimed that there has been a consistent decline in both LWE violence and the geographical spread of LWE influence. While, violent incidents have declined from a high of 2,258 in 2009 to 833 in 2018, resultant fatalities have declined steadily from 1,005 in 2010 to 240 in 2018. He also stated that the reduction in the geographical spread of LWE is evident in the decline in the number of Districts reporting violence to 60 in 2018. There were a total of 223 Maoist-affected districts in 2008, as per UMHA data.

Despite the reverses the Maoists have suffered across the country, however, it is clear that the Maoists have not given up, nor have they lost their capacities to strike against high value targets.

IEDs: Continuous Haemorrhage
Tushar Ranjan Mohanty
Research Associate; Institute for Conflict Management

On July 10, 2019, one soldier was killed and another five were injured in two separate bomb explosions in the North Waziristan District of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). The first incident occurred near Kharqamar check-post in Data Khel tehsil (revenue unit). Officials disclosed that a bomb disposal squad was searching the area when a remote-controlled Improvised Explosive Device (IED) went off. Four security personnel were injured. One of the injured personnel later succumbed to his injuries. The second blast took place near Mir Ali town, when a Security Forces’ (SFs) vehicle hit the IED while they were on their way to the Army’s Golden Arrow School, which had been struck by a rocket. Two SF personnel were injured in the blast.

On June 7, 2019, three Army officers and a soldier were killed while another four soldiers sustained injuries when militants targeted a military vehicle through an IED planted on the roadside in the Kharqamar area of North Waziristan District of KP.

On June 6, 2019, two Frontier Corps (FC) personnel were killed in an IED explosion in the Khost tehsil of Harnai District in Balochistan. A statement released by ISPR noted, "terrorists targeted FC troops during their patrolling on Eid security duties."

On June 1, 2019, at least one Pakistan Army soldier was killed in a gun and bomb attack on a military vehicle in the Boya area of North Waziristan District in KP. The terrorists first opened fire on the Army vehicle, which was on routine patrolling in the area, before they attacked it with an IED.

According to partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), Pakistan has already recorded a total of at least 11 incidents of IED attacks resulting in 12 deaths and over 49 persons injured in 2019 (data till July 21). These incidents have been registered in two provinces: Balochistan (six incidents, seven killed and 40 injured) and KP (five incidents, five killed and nine injured).

Since March 6, 2000, the number of such explosions stands at 498. These incidents have resulted in 1,026 deaths and 2,447 persons injured. The maximum number of incidents have been reported from FATA (172), followed by KP (132), Balochistan (83), Sindh (70) and Punjab (45). In terms of fatalities, FATA (371) comes first, followed by KP (360), Balochistan (117), Sindh (133) and Punjab (45). [Since media access is heavily restricted in the most disturbed areas of Pakistan, and there is only fitful release of information by Government agencies, the actual figures could be much higher.]

Further, during the period of Taliban control over the tribal areas, the terrorists had planted innumerable IEDs. There have been a continuous trickle of incidents of accidental explosions of such IEDs in the tribal areas. According to the SATP database, there have been at least 118 such incidents resulting in 248 fatalities and 263 persons injured since 2000. 

IEDs pose a particularly serious threat in the KP Districts and erstwhile FATA. When the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) started returning to their homes in 2017 after a series of military operations in the tribal areas of KP and erstwhile FATA — they found their villages and areas surrounding their homes littered with deadly landmines.

Mohammad Mumtaz Khan, an IDP from South Waziristan, describing his personal horror story about IEDs, stated, on April 26, 2018: “I am lucky that I got away with a small injury. It may not be so the next time around. He added, further, that the mountains and valleys were “teeming” with improvised explosive devices (IED) and explosive remnants of war (ERW).” Raza Shah, who heads the Sustainable Peace and Development Organization, an active member of the global Control Arms Coalition and International Action Network on Small Arms, agreed: “Despite having cleared the area of militants, it is not possible for many to move about freely as the place remains infested with landmines.” 

The Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies (PICSS) noted that deaths in IED attacks are the third highest in any specific type of attack (physical assaults caused highest fatalities followed by suicide attacks). IEDs have, consequently, worried the Pakistani security establishment for long certain measures have been adopted to counter the threat.

In 2012, the Army established the Counter IED Explosives and Munitions School (CIEMS) to help train responders to reduce the IED threat. The then CIEMS Chief Instructor Brigadier Basim Saeed had claimed, on April 22, 2014, that the School helped the country slash the frequency of IED incidents by 20 per cent since its establishment.

An inter-agency meeting, headed by Lieutenant General Rashad Mahmood, the then Chief of General Staff (CGS), was held on February 11, 2013. During the meeting it was decided to create a new force to combat the increasing use of IEDs in terrorism incidents. Later, a March 2, 2014, media report quoting an unnamed defence official claimed that the anti-IED Division established within the armed forces had become fully functional in multidimensional anti-IED operations in various cities and troubled areas of the country. At the same time, comprehensive awareness campaigns were also in the process of being launched. According to the official, extra security measures had been taken at all levels and on all tiers in order to curb the incidents of IED attacks in market places, civilian gatherings and religious processions.

Further in 2015, the Police School of Explosive Handling (PSEH), a first of its kind, was established at Nowshera in KP, to administer different courses on explosive handling. 3,171 personnel, including 86 ladies, had been trained in 130 courses till 2018.

Also, an unnamed senior security official said on December 15, 2018, that 22 demining teams were being formed by the Army to defuse and remove IEDs and landmines in KP and the erstwhile FATA. The official disclosed that these de-miners would be in addition to the 43 teams already working in the seven former tribal agencies. The de-mining teams were active in all the tribal districts, particularly in North Waziristan and South Waziristan. The Bomb Disposal Unit (BDU) of KP Police continued to play a vital role in combating the IED menace. The KP-BDU successfully defused 201 IEDs during 2018.

Though the de-miners have cleared mines many places, a great deal of work remains in certain areas, as explosions continue occur regularly causing loss of life and injuries. Despite adopting a number of measures to dry up supplies of raw material for IED manufacture, moreover, Pakistan continues to struggle to control IED attacks.