left-leaning intellectuals and rights workers may term it as repression but their protests are unlikely to deter the Kerala Police from taking certain harsh law-enforcement measures, which may include booking individuals just for possessing pro-Maoist literature, in order to contain the Maoist menace in the context of the recurring left extremist attacks.
Several human rights activists have started likening the State police to the Thought Police of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, saying that their objective is to spread a fear psychosis among individuals so that they would hesitate to support protests against “injustices” like forced eviction in the name of development, destruction of environment by mafias, etc.
Indeed, the first step in the police strategy is to mount an operation against individuals and outfits which provide ideological and moral support to Maoists. The police consider such elements as the support base of Maoism at least in Kochi which has seen Maoists successfully carrying out two attacks since November 10.
According to reports, the police are presently focusing their attention on Porattom, an outfit constituted mainly by former Naxalites and pro-left intellectuals who have allegedly been justifying Maoist actions on ideological grounds. The Kochi police is said to have already drawn up a list of individuals connected to this outfit for close monitoring.
The police devised the new strategy after the attack by suspected Maoists on the project office of the National Highways Authority of India at Kalamassery off Kochi on January 29. Two persons, both human rights activists, have been arrested following the incident though it is yet to be known whether they had any connection with the incident.
Protests have already come up against the arrests and the subsequent raids held by the police on houses and offices of several pro-left individuals. “The arrest without sufficient reason, the nightly raids and the arrogance with which the police carried out these have created an impression that there is an undeclared Emergency,” said a Kochi-based rights worker.
According to the police, the attacks carried out in Kochi are indicative of an attempt by the Maoists to expand their network into urban centres after establishing a fairly strong base among the Adivasi settlements in the forests of northern Kerala where they have already carried out more than half a dozen attacks, mainly on Government offices.
They think that attacks like those on the corporate office of gelatin manufacturing company Nitta Gelatin ltd in Kochi and the outlets of KFC and McDonald’s at Palakkad are aimed at attracting urban youth to the path of violent leftist struggle. “We are convinced that the attack on the NHAI office could not have occurred without local help,” said a top Kochi Police official.
Nightly raids by the police without search warrants on the houses of Porattom workers, human rights activists and farmers have come up also from the hilly Wayanad district of northern Kerala which had recently seen four Maoist operations, including the one in which they exchanged fire with the Thunderbolt commandos of the Kerala Police, since November 18.
The raids held on Friday-Saturday night in Wayanad were on houses of individuals who were said to have connections with Jaison Cooper and lawyer Thushar Nirmal Saradhi, who were arrested after the attack on the NHAI office. The police had tried to take away some books from one of the houses but dropped the plan after the rights worker demanded a receipt, reports said.
legal experts warn that the police’s plan to book people possessing pro-left literature would yield no results except legal battles as several courts have already made it clear that this is not sufficient ground for arrests. “The police may succeed in spreading a scare. But they have to ensure that this scare does not turn into terror,” said a senior lawyer of the Kerala High Court.