RAIPUR, India (AFP) — As the state at the epicentre of India's Maoist insurgency battles the rebels, journalists say they too are finding themselves branded as outlaws.
A law passed by Chhattisgarh state in 2005 made it a crime to "assist in a meeting" with a member of a banned organisation, or to say or write anything that encourages "disobedience to established law and its institutions."
Local journalists say the law amounts to a gag as they try to cover those on the wrong side of the world's largest democracy.
"There has been a psychological effort to create an atmosphere where you feel that if you interview Naxals (Maoists), the government could arrest you," said Ruchir Garg, bureau chief for news channel Sahara Samay in the state capital Raipur.
"This was a very systematic and calculated effort."
The Maoist insurgency grew out of a peasant uprising in 1967 and has hit half India's 29 states.
Tensions in the region escalated dramatically on Friday when 13 police and a civilian were killed in the worst attack in months in neighbouring Orissa state.
Tens of thousands of people have been displaced in Chhattisgarh by the conflict and now live in shelters as counter-insurgency forces operate in the increasingly lawless countryside.
New Delhi refuses to negotiate with the insurgents and Garg, who said he continued to try to interview Maoist rebels from time to time, has been unnerved by remarks from officials implying he is now on police radar.
"'You're here?'" Garg recalled one state minister saying in mock-surprise at a press conference. "Our police are searching all over for you."
But Garg says it is still easier for him to report on the conflict than for those based in the densely-forested south of the state, where the war with the rebels -- who say they are fighting for the rights of tribal communities and landless farmers -- is most intense.
Several local journalists said they feared security forces could attack them if they tried to venture into areas believed to be Maoist strongholds to interview the rebels or follow up on alleged human rights abuses by police.
"The local correspondents of the regional newspapers and media have been in a difficult position for the last two years," Vincent Brossel, head of the Asia desk of rights group Reporters Without Borders, told AFP.
"When you have a civil war or terror groups it is the right of the press to cover both sides. The Maoists are part of the story."
Development workers have also come under official scrutiny.
The state government has used the new law against 58-year-old health worker Binayak Sen, who has spent years providing malaria and tuberculosis care in remote areas of the state.
Sen was arrested last May allegedly for couriering letters out of prison for a Maoist leader he visited on numerous occasions.
His lawyers and activists have linked his arrest to his human rights work in the state.
Sen, who denies the charges, has publicised cases where the police allegedly killed innocent villagers and then dubbed them Maoists. At least one of these incidents is now under official investigation.
"They try to obliterate the distinction between who is a Maoist and who is a just a civil right activist who is raising his voice," said his wife Ilina Sen, 56.
Government officials deny they are targeting anyone and say the evidence against Sen was compelling enough for the India's Supreme Court to refuse him bail.
In August, a local official accused the medical charity Doctors Without Borders of supporting the Naxals -- a charge the group denied -- and its work was temporarily halted.
The aid group appeared to have fallen under suspicion because it carried out its health work in forested areas and villages suspected of providing shelter to the Maoists.
Last month the health-focused NGO Vanvasi Chetna Ashram, whose leader Himanshu Kumar has criticised some of the state's anti-Maoist tactics, had its licence cancelled, allegedly for usurping government land.
Kumar has challenged the charge.
"The government is not in a position to reply to the issues which we raise so in return they retaliate somewhere else," he said.
The US-based Human Rights Watch says there is a pattern of harassing those who oppose the state's methods of dealing with the Naxals -- which involves creating a grass-roots anti-rebel movement that critics say is little more than a violent militia.
"The state is whittling away at civil society," said their South Asia researcher Meenakshi Ganguly.
"What are human rights groups or journalists going to do? If they don't go into these areas to document those things, the truth is never going to come out."
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