The recent (September 2012) recovery from Silodar forest (on border of Bihar and Jharkhand) of a US-made Colt and Hart-manufactured M-16 rifle (a prohibited bore by US Army), an Italian pistol and UK-made bulletproof jacket from an arms supplier Praful Malakar and CPIM/Maoist, Zonal Commander Anil Yadav needs to be viewed extremely seriously. Simultaneously, an AK-56 was recovered from Patna. Then was the news that the CEO of a Hyderabad-based company, Leckon Infra Private Limited, and seven employees of the same company were arrested while en route to supply 50 kg of explosives to the Maoists on the Andhra-Odisha border. The CEO (named Bhupal) was reportedly carrying the explosive in his own SUV in addition to mobile phones, batteries and Maoist literature in the form of books in Telugu. Leckon Infra Private Limited is working on projects worth Rs. 291 crore in the Maoist-affected areas of Odisha and Jharkhand. Possibilities of Leckon Infra Private Limited having been infiltrated by Maoists and/or coerced by Maoists to supply explosives under threat exist.

When insurgency broke out in the Kashmir Valley in 1989-90, some people talked about how long such a ragtag movement with countrymade weapons could survive. What followed is for all to see. The same ragtag-cliché was being attributed to the Maoists over the years despite the Prime Minister describing it a major threat to national security all along. The Maoists may have earlier relied on weapons and equipment snatched from security forces aside from country-made ones but not anymore. Besides, the Maoists dubbed ‘ragtag’ had in their very opening rounds displayed deadly adeptness in use of explosives, their core group having had extensive training from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

The manner in which they are expanding their Rs. 1,500-crore annual income through extortion and looting also has the telltale mark of the LTTE, with expanding poppy farming (Taliban style) perhaps on advice from Lashkar-e-Toiba/Al Qaeda. The manner, in which sophisticated and secure Chinese communication equipment was discovered from underground caches in Odisha few months back, carefully wrapped and sealed for future use, too had the LeT hallmark. Uzis and AK-47s had been discovered earlier in Maoists hideouts as well as a number of laptops albeit government liked to keep the latter under wraps. Now China is supplying assault rifles to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in Manipur and the Maoists through Kachen rebels in north Myanmar. The Maoists have now commenced their operations in Assam as well.

Endeavour of both China and Pakistan is to synergise the insurgent outfits in India to create a compact revolutionary zone (CRZ) all along the foothills of Himalayas from Jammu and Kashmir to Assam and link this arch through the Maoist-affected states right down to Kerala in the South. Kerala is already infested by LeT and the Popular Front of India (PFI) having picked up weapons against the Indian state. There are already some 40 million illegal weapons circulating in India with an annual trade of $4 million.

Our enemies are hell bent on fanning our internal fires and contiguity to international borders is hardly prerequisite for pumping weapons, fake currency, drugs and infiltration into India. The nexus between the CPI (Maoist) and PLA of Manipur is growing stronger and the latter is providing training to Maoists in Jharkhand and Saranda forests. Should Begum Khaleda Zia and her Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) return to power in Bangladesh in 2014, the anti-India terrorist camps in that country are likely to be revived. India needs to make concerted efforts to address the Maoists insurgency. Mere statements that the issue will be resolved in next two to three years will not suffice.

The views expressed herein are the personal views of the author.