Thousands of paramilitaries were deployed in a massive manhunt yesterday for Maoist rebels across central India hours after they ambushed an official convoy killing 27 people and injuring 33 others.
Senior police officials in Chhattisgarh state, where the drastic attack on members from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's Congress Party took place on Saturday, said the security forces were operating in "inhospitable terrain" to hunt down the rebels.
More than 200 armed Maoists attacked the convoy of Congress Party leaders returning from a political rally as it travelled through the forested Sukma area, 345km from the state capital, Raipur.
They blocked the road by felling trees and detonating a land mine that stopped the convoy before opening fire.
Injured security personnel said the firefight in which they were hopelessly outnumbered lasted over two hours after which they surrendered to the Maoists who disarmed them before allowing them to leave.
But at gunpoint the rebels took state Congress Party chief Nandkumar Patel and his newly married son Dinesh and executed them in the nearby jungles from where their bodies were later recovered.
Mahendra Karma, the former provincial home minister who founded Salwa Judum (Purification Hunt), a local militia to fight the Maoists with state help some years ago, also died in the attack.
Federal security officials said Saturday’s ambush was the deadliest by Maoists since the April 2010 attack in the same region in which 73 policemen were similarly gunned down.
The Maoists, who claim to be inspired by the Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong, have successfully tapped into growing resentment among India's rural poor and vast tribal population over exploitation by a corrupt, effete and uncaring administration.
They demand land and jobs for the poor and ultimately want to establish a “classless society” by overthrowing India’s “semicolonial, semifeudal” form of administration through violent revolution.
Operating in 20 of India’s 28 provinces with an estimated cadre strength of between 15,000-20,000, the rebels operate a parallel government in their areas of dominance and have been described as the country’s “greatest internal security challenge” by Mr Singh.
The Maoists have repeatedly warned the government that attacks similar to the one at the weekend would intensify unless it halted its offensive against them.
More than 2500 people, including police, militants and civilians, have been killed in Maoist violence over the past few years.
The Maoists’ eventual aim is to establish a “people’s government” in their areas of control by progressively dominating the countryside through coercion and indoctrination but not by holding territory and by encircling, but rarely attacking, cities.
Visiting some of those wounded on Sunday, Mr Singh denounced the “barbaric attack” and said India would “never bow down” before the rebels.
