nMaoists have released unharmed a Chhattisgarh Constable they abducted on May 4 in Bijapur after locals reportedly put pressure on the Naxalites not to kill him.
"We could understand very little of what they (Naxals) were speaking as neither my daughter nor I knew the language they were conversing in during the ‘Jan Adalat’," his relieved wife Sunita Kattam said.
"But it was quite reassuring to see Santosh alive," she said.
Constable Santosh Kattam of Bijapur was freed on Tuesday after a Maoist kangaroo court known as ‘Jan Adalat’ met in a forested patch of remote Bijapur district and found him "not guilty".
Santosh Kattam was kidnapped on May 4 from Gorana village in Bijapur district while he had gone to see a local 'mela', his wife told The Pioneer over phone.
“He had left house to get ration on his Scooty. However, he did not return that day. Then people around us speculated that Santosh would have been abducted. But we did not believe them as earlier too he had gone without informing us and had later returned,” Sunita said.
Two days later, Sunita came to know that her husband had been indeed abducted. Clueless about his whereabouts, she went into the jungle looking for her him.
“I came across a few small villages whose residents confirmed that Santosh had passed from there with Maoists,” she said.
Ganesh Mishra, a local journalist who negotiated with the Maoists for Santosh’s release, said: “Santosh was left unharmed as people in the ‘Jan Adalat’ supported him and his wife and pressurized Maoists not to kill him.”
Meanwhile, Bijapur's Superintendent of Police Kamlochan Kashyap said the police had been monitoring the situation but did not intervene as it could have proved fatal for the Constable.
According to Mishra, the Maoists let go Santosh after he agreed to quit the police and do farming at his ancestral village. Santosh is the lone bread winner in his family which includes two daughters and a son.