No mercy for urban Maoists Says Amit Shah as Lok Sabha okays anti-terror Bill
Hans News Service | 24 July 2019 8:10 PM GMT
No mercy for urban Maoists Says Amit Shah as Lok Sabha okays anti-terror Bill
HIGHLIGHTS
The Lok Sabha on Wednesday passed the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Amendment Act,
2019, amid a walkout by Congress and TMC MPs, who sought the Bill be sent to a
Parliamentary standing committee for scrutiny.
New Delhi: The Lok Sabha on Wednesday passed the Unlawful Activities (Prevention)
Amendment Act, 2019, amid a walkout by Congress and TMC MPs, who sought the Bill be
sent to a Parliamentary standing committee for scrutiny.
The Bill, tabled by Minister of State for Home G Kishan Reddy, seeks to introduce a
provision in the anti-terror Act to designate individuals suspected to have terror links, instead
of just organisations, as terrorists.
During a division of votes, demanded by AIMIM's Asaduddin Owaisi for consideration of the
Bill, as many as 287 MPs supported it and only eight opposed it.During a debate in the Lok
Sabha, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said the amendments were necessary to root out
terror and keep the law enforcement agencies a step ahead of terrorists.
Citing examples from other countries, Shah said, "UN has a procedure for it, US has it,
Pakistan has it, China has it, Israel has it, European Union has it, everyone has done it."
In his speech, Shah lashed out at people behind urban Maoism, a term used by the BJP and
its ideological allies for those it blames for supporting Maoists and said the government had
no sympathy for them. "In the name of ideology, some people promote urban Maoism. We
have no sympathy for them," he said.
The Congress under the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had brought in UAPA, he said,
targeting the Opposition party, whose members earlier questioned the rationale behind the
law.
Hitting out at the Congress for opposing the amendment, Shah said if the UPA was correct
in amending anti-terror laws in their tenure, then so was the NDA. The Home Minister was
referring to the POTA that was repealed by the UPA government in 2004.
Shah had last week said in Parliament that the UPA government had repealed POTA for
"vote bank politics", and had the Act not been repealed 26/11 would probably not have
happened.
"The only purpose of this law is to root out terrorism. We will ensure that this law will not be
misused," he said. The Congress had earlier criticised the UAPA (Amendment) Bill, 2019,
saying the legislation was being made more draconian by allowing individuals to be declared
as terrorists rather than just organisations. The provision was also opposed by the YSRCP
and DMK.
The UAPA Amendment Bill, 2019, amends the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967.
Under the Act, an investigating officer is required to obtain the prior approval of the
director-general of police (DGP) to seize properties that may be connected with terrorism.
The Bill adds that if the investigation is conducted by an officer of the National Investigation
Agency (NIA), the approval of the director-general of NIA would be required for seizure of
such property. The bill additionally empowers the officers of the NIA, of the rank of inspector
or above, to investigate cases.
Now urban Maoists
The Maharashtra police claim an urban Maoist thrust is underway and have arrests to show
for it. Are the state urban centres hotbeds of Maoism or is it just another politically
convenient conspiracy theory?
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https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/the-big-story/story/20180625-urban-maoists-
maharashtra-1259936-2018-06-16
Kiran D Tare
June 16, 2018
ISSUE DATE: June 25, 2018UPDATED: September 7, 2018 10:48 IST
Violence in Maharashtra's Koregaon-Bhima in January 2018.
In the early hours of June 6, the Pune city police arrested five activists from Mumbai, Nagpur
and Delhi in connection with provocative speeches made at a conference in Pune on
December 31 last year. The speeches made at the Elgar Parishad allegedly incited violence
on January 1 in nearby Koregaon-Bhima, where around 300,000 Dalits had gathered. One
person was killed in the riots that later spread across Maharashtra.
Police have accused Surendra Gadling, Shoma Sen and Mahesh Raut from Nagpur, Sudhir
Dhawale from Mumbai and Rona Wilson from Delhi of misleading the Dalits and ingraining
hardline thinking of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) to create a rift between
communities. Pune joint commissioner of police Ravindra Kadam said, They have been
booked for getting funds from Maoists to organise Elgar Parishad. The police claim to have
found evidence in Wilson's laptop that the Parishad was funded by Maoists and that the
event was preceded by two months of preparation.
The public prosecutor, Ujjwala Pawar, claimed in court that the evidence shows that funds
were provided by the CPI (Maoist) to comrade Sudhir for the Koregaon-Bhima task and
Comrades Shoma and Surendra were authorised to provide funds for programmes in future.
Kadam said the Maoist suspects had been under watch for a long time. They are the urban
face of Maoists and it is their strategy to influence urban masses who feel deprived or
nurture a sense of discrimination by the state, Kadam said. The accused were booked under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, under which the maximum sentence is seven years.
Kadam claimed two Maoists, Deepu and Manglu, were in touch with Dhawale for over two months before the Elgar Parishad took place. The speakers at the conference apparently talked about overthrowing the Brahminical system and empowering Dalits. An
unexceptionable ambition to most, but Deepu and Manglu have allegedly been involved in
attacks on security personnel in Jharkhand, Odisha, Maharashtra and other states.
The arrests have sparked a new meme in public discourse: urban Maoism, which is being
played up by the Sangh Parivar and its supporters as a new red peril infiltrating the states
towns and cities and specifically tapping into the rich vein of Dalit resentment which has
unnerved the BJP and RSS leadership. With 55 per cent of its 120 million population living
in urban areas, Maharashtra is the most urbanised Indian state. In the last two years, the
state has become a hotbed of caste conflict, with rallies and counter-rallies by Maratha and
Dalit organisations.
Significantly, the new scare about urban Maoists comes at a time when the RSS leadership
seems to have focused its strategy on countering a perceived alliance of forces fomenting
popular unrest against the BJP. In the eyes of the Sangh Parivar, a Maoist hand can be seen
in such diverse agitations as the caste clashes of Koregaon-Bhima (January 1), the anti-
mining protests in Tuticorin (May) and the Pathalgadi movement for tribal village autonomy in
Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. The dark design in this view links the Congress party and key
Dalit leaders, notably Jignesh Mevani, in an unholy alliance with Maoists.
From this perspective, Maoists are looking at cities to expand and exploit the fissures
created by caste divides. The suspected urban thrust (apparently thwarted by the recent
arrests) is seen to have coincided tellingly with left-wing extremists rapidly losing ground in
the states remote eastern districts, such as Gadchiroli, in the face of combat operations by
the state police and an extensive outreach to villagers by the administration.
Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis announced on June 7 that the state had enough evidence
to nail the Maoists and asked the police not to leave any stone unturned in curbing their
activities. Maharashtra director general of police Satish Mathur said the arrests by the Pune
police were part of the strategy to root out Maoism.
The Intelligence Bureau (IB) has flagged Maoism in urban Maharashtra as a security
challenge. In a report submitted in February, the IB has identified the smaller cities, such as
Jalgaon, Amalner, Aurangabad, Wardha, Parbhani and Nanded, apart from metros like
Mumbai and Pune, as breeding centres for urban Maoism. The police got alarmed in the last
week of May when graffiti paying homage to the Maoists of Gadchiroli emerged on
Mumbai's local trains.
If graffiti on trains seems rather slender evidence for an elaborate conspiracy to suborn the
state, a more sensational story was soon on offer when public prosecutor Pawar revealed
on June 7 that a letter describing a plot to kill Prime Minister Narendra Modi by targeting his
roadshows had been discovered on Wilson's laptop. While this revelation briefly amplified
the new red scare, with ministers, including Nitin Gadkari, weighing in, it was also received
with some scepticism by prominent politicians, notably Sharad Pawar, who described the
alleged letter as a ploy to garner peoples sympathy. However, an IB officer points to Modis
cancelled roadshow in Ahmedabad in December last year and his travel by a seaplane
instead to indicate that the threat was very real.
Urban Maoism might sound like an oxymoron because of the popular perception that
Maoism is a rural insurgency. The CPI (Maoist) 2007 handbook Strategy and Tactics of the
Indian Revolution outlines the blueprint of their plan to overthrow the Indian state, first in the
countryside where the enemy (state) is weak and then to gradually encircle and capture
cities. The urban movement, the Maoist handbook notes, is one of the main sources of
cadres and leadership, responsible for supplies, technology, expertise, information. The
handbook exhorts the party to mobilise Dalits for the revolutionary movement. According to
social activist Datta Shirke of the Jan Sangharsh Samiti, which works in the Maoist heartland
of Gadchiroli, Maoists have indeed begun to invoke Dalit icon B.R. Ambedkar's name in their
propaganda.
Nor is it the alleged Maoist sympathiser Dhawale's first brush with the law. In 2011, he was
arrested from Wardha railway station for alleged links with Maoists. but he was acquitted
after four years for lack of evidence. Another organisation, the Kabir Kala Manch (KKM),
formed in 2002, has been under the scanner for allegedly invoking Maoism in the name of
Ambedkar. In April, the Pune police raided the homes of four KKM activists, Harshali Potdar,
Jyoti Jagtap, Ramesh Ghaichor and Deepak Dhengle.
Potdar and Jagtap allege the government is defaming Ambedkarite activists by branding
them Maoists. Ambedkarite activists are arrested more than six months after the
Koregaon-Bhima violence because they demanded the arrest of Hindutva leader Sambhaji
Bhide, said Jagtap. Former Bombay High Court justice B.G. Kolse-Patil points out that
Dhawale has been acquitted earlier. The court had clearly said that merely possessing
Maoist literature is not sufficient to call anyone a Maoist. He/ she must be overtly involved in
violence, he says.
The Elgar Parishad in Pune on December 31, 2017. Among the attendees were Gujarat
MLA Jignesh Mevani, student activist Umar Khalid and Dalit activist Radhika Vemula.
Dhawale's lawyer Siddharth Patil says the police wasted time in investigating the contents in
his laptop which was already seized in April. They have applied charges under the Unlawful
Activities (Prevention) Act. Under this act, the local police do not have any authority to
investigate the case. We want investigation by a competent central agency, he says.
A think-tank, the Forum for Integrated National Security (FINS), whose office-bearers are
associated with the RSS, had submitted a report to the Maharashtra government in March,
detailing how Dhawale's organisation, the Republican Panthers, mobilised Dalits all through
2017 and allegedly instigated violence at the Koregaon-Bhima event, staged as a homage
to the outnumbered Dalit soldiers of the British East India Company who fought against the
upper caste Peshwa army. We noticed from the literature distributed that they had a greater
plan to disturb law and order, claims Captain Smita Gaikwad, a fellow with FINS. The
Maharashtra government, however, refused to accept the findings of this report as it blamed
the police for negligence.
Dalit leaders Ramdas Athawale and Prakash Ambedkar have also weighed in on the issue,
in contrasting voices. While Athawale, a junior minister for social justice and empowerment
in the Modi government, has appealed to Dalit youths not to associate with Maoists, he did
register some discomfort at the arrests. If the activists arrested are followers of Babasaheb
Ambedkar, they should not be considered Maoists. There should be a thorough
investigation, Athawale said.
Prakash Ambedkar, who had already voiced his objection at the arrest of the KKM and Elgar
Parishad leaders in April, contrasted the arrest of the activists to the free run of Hindutva
leaders. He is not the first to point out that Milind Ekbote and Sambhaji Bhide, two Hindutva
leaders who are among the original accused for the Koregaon-Bhima riots, are free men.
Ekbote is out on bail while Fadnavis has given a clean chit to Bhide. The government is
pursuing innocents instead of arresting the real culprits, Ambedkar said.
Urban Naxals case accused Gautam Navlakha had links with Hizbul, states Rona Wilson's
report
The report reportedly prepared by Maoist cadres was recovered by Pune police while they
were trying to retrieve old documents from laptops of the other arrested accused.
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Divyesh Singh
New Delhi
July 25, 2019UPDATED: July 25, 2019 00:02 IST
Gautam Navlakha (File photo | PTI)
The Pune police on Wednesday filed a report in connection with the Urban Naxals case
accused Gautam Navlakha's petition which hinted at his links with Hizbul Mujahideen in
Kashmir.
The report reportedly prepared by Maoist cadres was recovered by Pune police while they
were trying to retrieve old documents from laptops of the other arrested accused.
According to the report which has been recovered from the laptop of Urban Naxals case
accused Rona Wilson, Gautam Navlakha named as GN in the report was in touch with
several separatists in Kashmir and some commanders of Hizbul Mujahideen.
The report reportedly written in 2013 mentions that Navlakha made several trips to Kashmir
and met Shakil Bakshi, a HM commander.
Later, he was also in touch with Parvez Khan who was earlier a Hizbul commander and then
turned double agent. Navalakha met HM commander on behalf of Maoists to exchange arms
and ammunition and also to help, but Maoist leadership reporter had no idea about it.
Also, he sent Khan to meet Maoist commander in Delhi on behalf of HM but Maoist fact
finding team found that Khan was a double agent. HM reportedly wanted to establish a
relation with Maoists in order to get access to Myanmar border areas to secure weapons.
The report also states that Gautam Navlakha was working for the government and against
Maoists on many occasions.
He spoke against the Maoist movement and also tried to force them into accepting offers
from the UPA government. The report talks about his meetings with Sonia Gandhi and Ilena
Sen, wife of Binayak Sen and Chidambaram for his release from jail in 2009.
The report also talks about Maoist cadres located in foreign countries and other accused
involved in the case.
