Four days after 24 people were attacked and killed in a Congress convoy, Maoists in Chhattisgarh claimed responsibility of the attack in written and audio notes sent to the media, NDTV reported on Tuesday.
The note, written in Telegu, said the attack had targeted Congress leaders Mahendra Karma, Nand Kumar Patel and VC Shukla, and expressed remorse for the “innocents” who died in the attack.
While leaders Karma and Patel died in the ambush on Saturday evening, Shukla, 84, who suffered three bullet injuries in his abdomen, is fighting for his life in a hospital in Gurgaon near Delhi.
In the note sent by a Maoist spokesperson, it is written that a People's Liberation Guerrilla Army or PLGA detachment carried out the attack on the convoy of 25 cars carrying the Congress leaders.
Patel, who was chief of the Chhattisgarh Congress, had been targeted because of his approval of an security force’s action against Naxalites called Operation Green Hunt during his time as the state’s home minister. The operation had allowed central forces to be part of operations against Naxals, the note alleged.
Karma, it says, was "punished" for what the Naxals called his "misdeeds". Karma, also a former Home Minister, had in 2005 launched the Salwa Judum, an anti-Naxal movement that won him much praise from even the BJP's Raman Singh, who is the incumbent Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh.
The Maoists have also blamed Mr Singh's dispensation equally for what they call "anti-people policies". The note in fact criticises Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Congress president Sonia Gandhi and BJP chief Rajnath Singh too for calling Saturday's incident an attack on democracy.
They also have seven demands. The Naxals want Operation Green Hunt to end and paramilitary forces to be sent back from Dandakaranya. They want laws like the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act 2005 (CSPSA) and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act 1967 to be scrapped. They also want an unspecified number of their men and people they call "innocent tribals" to be released from jail unconditionally.
The note also demands that deals with corporates "that loot natural resources" be cancelled.
