Left-wing extremists, Naxalites of the People's War Group (
PWG ), have traveled a long away from fielding hand-held, traditional farm tools as weapons. Their sagacity is, indeed, amazing. Perhaps, to state in a lighter vein, they would give a complex to India's defence technologists, if not put them to shame.
A media report of August 18, 2003 said the police in Kurnool district, southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, have launched preliminary investigations into a larger nexus between the PWG Naxalites and businesses after they had stumbled upon a PWG arms manufacturing unit in the Nallamala forests.
Further, the rebels, other recent reports indicate, are on the way to using Rocker Propelled Grenade launchers (RPGs). Speaking to the media on May 26, 2003, the then Director General of Police, Andhra Pradesh, P Ramulu, informed that his men had recovered drawings of RPGs from a Naxalite hideout in Kalimela village, on the Andhra Pradesh-Orissa border. As it appears, the PWG is now capable of assembling RPGs. The RPGs have been repeatedly put to use by terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), causing serious damage to property and inflicting casualties. On Independence Day, 2002, an Army Captain and a non-commissioned officer were killed in an RPG attack on their vehicle in Sophian district. In another incident, a few hours before Mufti Mohammad Sayeed was sworn in as the Chief Minister of J&K an RPG attack was launched on his residence. On both the occasions the attackers successfully escaped from the incident site. RPGs can be used to attack concrete structures as well as vehicles. In the context of the PWG, this new capability brings under threat an individual vehicle or a convoy of the security forces and political leaders. Further, police stations, security force camps and residences of targeted police officials and political leaders also face
serious threat.
A surrendered Naxalite told this researcher in 2002 that at least by the year 1992, the guerrillas learnt to service a sten gun. A media report of February 10, 2002 further confirmed the claim and added that the PWG was, in fact, manufacturing sten guns in the Nallama forests.
Another report in the vernacular Telugu Press revealed that the PWG Naxals might have acquired cellular phone guns. A cell phone gun can easily be passed of as a normal handset and is therefore difficult to detect. The threat of the use of cell phone gun has been there for sometime now in the country, as well as in Andhra Pradesh. It is not uncommon in Andhra Pradesh to be asked to deposit the cell phone with the security staff at the offices of some targeted police officials.
Such sophisticated weapons are, however, not new to the PWG's arsenal. Bandaru Dattatreya, who is presently the Union Minister of State Railways, said, in the Lok Sabha on December 10 1991, that the PWG had acquired 60 AK-47s and 20 sten guns from Sri Lanka's Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). He was quoting the then Home Minister of Andhra Pradesh as having said so on the floor of the State Legislature on August 20, 1991. Further, reports of late-December 2002 indicated that the PWG and the LTTE had some months earlier struck an arms deal, but the modalities (pricing) had to be finalised. Irrespective of the credibility of the report, in the light of the past acquisition, the LTTE's weapons holding needs to be carefully monitored and the waters of the Bay of Bengal patrolled to prevent the movement of weapons. Besides the LTTE in the past, the Khalistan terrorists, too, are believed to have provided arms to the PWG, and in fact, more weapons than the LTTE did.
P V Ramana
Research Fellow
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