Naxals renege on promise

Clueless Nitish says he has no information on abducted policemen

Maoist insurgents failed to keep their promise on releasing the three abducted policemen by Sunday morning, leaving the Nitish Kumar government and the police in Bihar in a state of utter confusion, disbelief and suspense.

As the deadline for freeing the policemen ended—first at 8 am and then at 4 pm—there was no sign of the policemen who the Maoists said on Saturday were being moved from the Haveli-Kharagpur forests to Lakhisarai.

Earlier, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said he had no information on the release of the policemen.

It could not be immediately ascertained whether the Maoists had adopted a tactical move by not freeing the policemen who have now been in their captivity for seven days. Initially, insurgents abducted four policemen and subsequently executed Bihar Military Police constable Lucas Tete.

The Maoists had kidnapped four Bihar policemen, sub-inspectors Abhay Prasad Yadav, Rupesh Kumar, Bihar Military Police havildar Mohammad Ehsaan and assistant sub-inspector Lukas Tete from Kajra in Lakhisarai district following an encounter on August 29. Following Tete’s killing, an alarmed state government declared its willingness to negotiate with the Maoists who rejected the talks offer on Saturday but said the policemen were safe.

Self-proclaimed CPI(Maoist) spokesman Avinash Kumar, who spoke to some select electronic mediapersons on Saturday, promising the release of the abducted policemen, was incommunicado. Since the abduction, this was the second time that the Maoists have misled the police and the media about their next step. The first time they claimed to have killed sub-inspector Abhay Yadav, which actually turned out to be Tete.

The second time they said on Saturday that since the government had promised safe passage to the Naxals, they would release the three hostages on Sunday. That promise, too, remained unfulfilled.

In a dramatic turn of events though, a self-proclaimed Naxal commander clandestinely visited the house of one of the abducted policemen—Abhay Kumar Yadav, who was earlier mistakenly thought to have been executed—in Khagaria district and asked his wife to tie a rakhi on his wrist since he was releasing her husband.

“You are my sister. That is why we are releasing your husband in a short while,” the mysterious visitor told Yadav’s wife before disappearing from the scene stealthily.
The local police had no clue about the Maoist commander’s sudden appearance.

Suspense continues

As the hostage drama moved into the seventh day, the suspense over the fate of the abducted policemen gripped the state, though the Opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD)     expressed optimism that the captives would be set free “anytime.”

Party national spokesman Ram Kripal Yadav told reporters here on Sunday that his party was hopeful of the policemen’s release, but sought to make political capital of the situation by saying that the optimism over they being set free had been made possible because of sustained pressure by the Rashtriya Janata Dal.

The police, the district administration, the media and the relatives of the abducted police personnel waited anxiously to hear the news of the release, but there was no sign of the three hostages till Sunday evening, even as the Centra Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and other securitymen cordoned off the forests in Lakhisarai, Munger and Jamui districts.