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Special Report
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Once a Naxalite, always a Naxalite
Bihar’s notorious Maoists who surrendered to enter the mainstream, now find it may have been a better idea to stay underground. Rajan Prakash reports
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 In Bihar’s Darbhanga district, Buchia Devi sits amidst the ruins, her thinking warped with fury and frustration. If she sees an approaching car, which is quite rare in her Shivram village, she takes it as the visible presence of an evil establishment trying to hound her. Not that her paranoia is unjustified.
A mother of four in her late thirties, Devi returned after an 18-month stint inside a dirty rotten prison in 2003 on charges of being a Naxalite. She was never an operational Maoist commander who pulls the trigger, but belonged to a gang of markers whose job was to put together the subterfuge in place: help carry messages, arrange shelter for comrades on the run, organise meals and the like. As successive district administrations in Darbhanga realised, she was quite a handful. Her darting and daring runs had given them enough sleepless nights and when she decided to give herself up under the amnesty offered by the Bihar government between 2002-2008, they were relieved.
When she surrendered, the police recovered Maoist literature and unused explosives from her house. Incredibly, her husband Kamal Manjhi, a daily wager, did not know about his wife’s activities until the police arrived at his tenement.
In the same district, another facet of this charade called the Naxalite rehabilitation programme comes to light. The zonal commander of the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) in charge of operations in north Bihar — Muzaffarpur, Darbhanga, Samastipur and Sitamarhi — is Himanshu Shekhar, known to the police by his nom de guerre, Prakash Malik. An outstanding student, Malik gave up his studies to go underground, marshaling troops and operational commanders against injustices.
As long as Malik was active, his exploits in pursuit of his ‘revolutionary’ activities were regarded legendary. Being a great narrator, visualiser and an activist, he could inspire young men and women to join the cause. Then one fine day, Malik too decided to throw in the towel. Tired of being consistently on the run and a little disillusioned with the cause he represented, he too fell for the general amnesty. All quite innocently. Devi and Malik represent two faces of why despite mouthing clichés, there is little or no attempt to get back those Naxalites aspiring to return to the mainstream. Chief ministers from Naxal-hit states routinely talk of ‘winning the hearts and minds’, but there is very little evidence of that on the ground. There is enough evidence to suggest that those ultras who gave up their arms in an effort to lead a regular life, have been left to fend for themselves — enemy of a society they once hounded, pariah for the police force which left them in the lurch in the name of rehabilitation and a traitor to their political cause.
The story is more or less similar for 351 such people who gave up their arms under the scheme promised by the government. Under this package, those giving up arms would be entitled to a relief of Rs 10,000; Rs one lakh as loan and a Rs 3,000 stipend until such time that the rehabilitation process was complete. Besides, the government promised protection.
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 In practice, the scenario looks mixed and not one which is likely to inspire confidence in a potential ultra contemplating a comeback. While Devi has not got a farthing by way of state assistance, Malik got immediate relief and Rs 3,000 stipend for 48 months, but no promised ‘seed’ money which could help him launch into something of an alternative career. Malik is, nonetheless, better placed than some of the others but that is because of his high ranking in the Maoist hierarchy. Lesser known figures who took the government’s offer at face value, are trying hard to organise their own protection and lead a normal existence.
Says Malik: “Whenever I come back from meetings dejected, my wife curses the day she compelled me to surrender. The government is not serious about rehabilitation. If it were, not so many of my comrades would be left high and dry. They were better off in the bushes.’’ In the case of unlettered Devi, nothing has worked; no corpus money. Her daughter works as a farm hand. The modus operandi of the government has in most cases defied explanation. The accused is first declared a proclaimed offender and offered amnesty. When they accept the offer, they are dropped off the list of offenders itself, making any entitlements for them under the rehabilitation plan redundant.
The story of Sadhu Sharan Laldev, a sub-zonal commander of the MCC and one whose head carried a Rs 25,000 reward, is particularly poignant. He surrendered on July 31, 2003 and wanted to start a ration shop with the corpus money that never came. He picked up employment with the Sonalika Tractor agency in Muzzafarpur and was just beginning to breathe easy when he was named in a case of arm snatching. He forked out Rs 45,000 to rustle up bail and there is still no sign of the promises made by the government. When Laldev went back to Sonalika Tractors, they just threw up their hands: once a Naxalite, always a Naxalite. Admits Laldev: “I am sorry that I ever surrendered. I am hiding as the promised police protection has not materialised. ‘’
Their parent cadre, MCC, worried at its depleting numbers, is aware of the new status of its former comrades and is not above calling them back. Points out another surrendered Naxalite, Mohammed Noor: “I have been ditched. I will go back to the MCC at the first chance I get.’’ In the Maoist-affected areas, posters exhorting ex-party members back into the party fold have sprung up. That may not be good news for the rehabilitation programme. Says chief of the Special Task Force (STF) to counter Maoists, SK Bhardwaj: “We cannot leave the work of monitoring to police stations. We have found people who have surrendered officially, but still keep in touch with their former colleagues.’’ (see interview)
The task of monitoring itself is not easy in Bihar where 31 out of 40 districts have been officially declared naxal-hit. Even if the establishment takes up the rehabilitation programme in right earnest, it has hell of a job at hand.
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