The Bastar Police in Chhattisgarh on September 15, launched a campaign to counter Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) propaganda in the region and to expose the organisation’s anti-development face and violent ways, reports Outlook. The drive, called ‘Bastar tha matta’ and ‘Bastar cho awaaz’ in Gondi and Halbi dialects respectively, meaning ‘voices of Bastar’, will see Police use posters, short films, audio clips and other popular methodologies to highlight Maoist atrocities, said a Police official. Inspector General of Police (IGP, Bastar range) Sundarraj Patilingam said, “Addressing challenges of Left Wing Extremism (LWE) is on top of the priority list of Bastar Police for the last two decades. Over these years, the local police with the help of central paramilitary forces like CRPF, BSF, ITBP and SSB have made deep inroads into erstwhile strongholds of CPI-Maoist.”
The IGP also added, “the popular three-pronged strategy, namely “Vishwas, Vikas and Suraksha” (trust, development and security), of the Security Forces (SFs) has yielded positive results in Bastar. In addition to the ongoing offensive operations against the red guerrillas, there is strong need to expose the real and ugly face of the Maoists. For that, we have launched this counter-propaganda psyops (psychological operations) against Maoist misdeeds.”