Seven villages evacuated

BHOPAL: It is not just the Bastar region in Chhattisgarh which is firmly inthe grip of the Maoists. The Maoist threat has moved 337 kms north of the Madhya Pradesh-Chhattisgarh border where at least seven tribal villages have been evacuated since February 10.

The seven villages — Dhiri, Mahoutkhodra, Mundidadar, Raeily, Godradi, Bhave and Malaida — with a population of 1,200, mostly Gond and Baiga tribes, have been deserted after Maoists demanded a youth from each family to join them.

Though the Madhya Pradesh government claims that only one village falls in the state, Lanji legislator Kishore Samrite told TOI that of the seven, four villages are in MP and three in Chhattisgarh. The tribals deserted these villages fearing retaliation after two Maoists — including a woman commander of Darrekasa 'dalam', Sunanda Bai — were killed in an encounter on January 22. Last week, the Nagpur police had recovered pamphlets and literature, claiming Maoists would avenge Sunanda Bai's killing. This prompted MP and Chhattisgarh to deploy two additional companies of armed forces in the sensitive area.

Balaghat collector Gulshan Bamra told TOI, "We had no knowledge that Naxals were running a training camp at Dhiri — the small village is the corridor for entry into Madhya Pradesh. Since January 12, about 56 Maoists were camping here. After the January 22 encounter, villagers feared retaliation. They said training camps were frequent in this area and that Naxals had demanded one youth from each family to join their movement."

The MP government, however, claimed the evacuation was not at the behest of the administration, rather villagers wanted to leave their remote forest homes. A plot of land at Lanji has been taken for rehabilitation of the tribals who have refused to go back to their forest dwellings, it said.

Former MP CM Digvijay Singh has also raised the issue in the assembly, saying it was not a solution and would only "aggravate" the problem like Chhattisgarh. Singh said evacuation would mean another 800 square km of forest area free for Maoist activities.