What’s so fake about fake maoist encounters?

 By Avishek Ganguly

June, 2010: Maoists kill women and child in Kangaroo court in Gumla town in Jharkhand

July, 2010: Maoists kill a 13 year old boy in Handibhanga village in Orissa suspecting him to be police informer.

August, 2010: Maoists hack to death 3 aged members of a family together suspecting them as police informers.

July, 2010: Top Maoist leader Cherukuri Raj Kumar alias Azad killed by Police in Adilabad in Andhra Pradesh

August, 2010: Maoist leader and kingpin of Jnaneshwari Express sabotage, Umakant Mahato shot dead by security forces in Midnapore, West Bengal.

The first three incidents, as per government or media records are terrorist activities by the Maoists. Well now coming to the last two incidents where security forces killed top Maoist leaders. The latter events would also have been normal but on the contrary, there have been allegations that they were fake encounters.  Human Rights Groups, led by Maoist sympathizer, Varavara Rao, have accused the government of killing Maoists when they were unarmed. They say that the killings were absolutely inhuman and the government needs to answer. In a bizarre chain of events, our railway minister, Mamata Banerjee too has shown her sympathy for Maoists and has questioned the nature of the killings.  So, were our security forces and police really wrong in fake encounters?

What exactly does a fake encounter mean? In simple terms, it is like staging a real encounter where unarmed people are killed in point black range or something like that. So then, what about the kangaroo courts where Maoists kill common people? Are the victims armed or does a hand to hand combat take place? They are tied, dragged and killed in the most inhuman manner. The first 3 incidents mentioned above will give you an idea.  What about innocent bus and train passengers who were killed in the Maoist sabotage? So if that is justified as some stupid revolutionary act, then what is wrong with surrounding a top Maoist leader and killing him in point blank range for the country’s security? In all countries, terrorists are neutralized. I guess the same should be done for these people too, whatever is the way: real or fake.

Human rights groups argue that it is inhuman to kill Maoists in such a way. I guess the question of humanity and inhuman behavior arises when we are dealing with human beings in the real sense. Based on what the Maoists are doing, I can’t put them in the category of humans. In fact they are even worse than animals. I think the best answer to these baseless allegations by the human rights groups is to adopt more draconian measures on the Maoists. It was KPS Gill, who had put an end to the Khalishtan movement in Punjab by his “goli ke badle goli” methods. The same should be applied on the Maoists too. Strike hard and instill terror, this should be the tactic.

There is nothing surprising about Mamata’s Banerjee’s stand on the Maoist issue. I guess everyone now understands that she is trying to throw the CPIM out of power in West Bengal by hook or crook. And if that means sympathizing the Maoists, there is no harm. After all these insurgents are making her road clear by killing CPIM leaders in the state. Tomorrow, if Lashkar-e-Toiba speaks against the CPIM, I guess Mamata will support them too. As a railway minister, she is already failure and yet she is leaving no stones unturned to get the chief minister’s seat.

To conclude, I can say that I do not find any fault with fake encounters on terrorists, and in fact support them. If terrorists can kill innocent people, they should be treated in the same way too. Mahatma Gandhi had once said, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”. However, with complete respect to the Father of the Nation, I guess this quote does not fit for the terrorists. If not the eyes, but at least their hands and legs should be chopped off so that they become a non entity.