AOB Maoist Encounter: Insurgents Threaten Naidu

The Andhra Pradesh Police today received a document containing a letter allegedly written and signed by the top brass of the Maoist movement in India, threatening AP, Telangana and the Centre with severe consequences for the encounter of 27 Maoists that occurred on October 24 in the Jantri forest of the Malkangiri district in the AP-Odisha Border zone.

The four-day combing ops carried out by a joint task force of the AP Police Greyhound unit, the Telangana Police, the Odisha Police and a central paramilitary force, has brought the naxal forces in the AOB on its knees, but in the process, it has seemingly put the State's security at risk, with several protests from CPI(M) members across the two Telugu States, and speculations of physical threat to the central leadership in the two States cropping up.

The letter received by the AP Police today elaborated on "police brutality" and spoke in detail about seeking vengeance for the slain insurgents.

The letter supposedly claims that "Maoists, for long, have been fighting to protect natural resources including minerals in tribal lands that were allegedly encroached by united AP governments and also by the two current Telugu governments. These resources are being forcibly mined and sold to big corporates. Any villager who resisted this encroachment would be tortured, killed or maimed. Since a few decades, villagers and tribesmen have been raising armed militia against these atrocities. But we are labelled anti-social elements. The October 24 encounter of 27 of our kinsmen have been targeted without reason. This shall not go unavenged. Maoists are organizing all over the two States and will soon launch an assault against the government, which has been looting people in the name of votes, polarizing opinions and killing innocent tribesmen in the name of governance. Nothing the government says or does is genuine. They rig elections, and buy MLAs and MPs. The police, which is supposed to protect people, instead protects the government and does their dirty work for them. These police are fighting against the wrong people."

"Several maoists have betrayed their ideology in the two States. Nayeem is one who them. The State government, led by Chandrababu Naidu, made him renegade against his own and turned him into a cold-blooded murderer. Hence we will start with the TDP and slay CM Chandrababu Naidu's son N Lokesh. We will also kill any government snitches within our ranks. We will make sure that the police, the military and the government are ousted soon."

But as per reports, the origin of the letter couldn't be pinpointed yet. The police is trying to find out whether the contents of the letter expressed genuine threat to the lives of those mentioned, or if it is just a decoy meant to disrupt harmony and induce fear in the people of the two States.