RANCHI/BHUBANESWAR Nov 20: Police had busted two jungle hideouts of Maoist rebels in eastern India and arrested about 24 guerrillas, some apparently plotting landmine attacks on government forces, officials said on Thursday.

Authorities in Jharkhand state, a Maoist stronghold, said the operation was a significant success and part of a crackdown on the rebels who had stepped up attacks in recent months.

“Eight Maoist rebels were arrested from the jungles of Gumla district of Jharkhand on Thursday morning,” said Baljeet Singh, police chief of Gumla district.

Another 16 rebels, from the state’s Hazaribagh district, were detained late on Wednesday.

The arrested included a local Maoist commander. Guns, Maoist literature and several sets of combat uniforms were also seized.

Police spokesman S.N. Pradhan said security forces were carrying out a special operation in seven of Jharkhand’s 24 districts worst hit by Maoist violence. The districts are remote, hilly and forested.

A swathe of mineral-rich jungles and hills in eastern, central and southern India is affected by the Maoist insurgency.

The rebels, who say they are fighting for the rights of poor farmers and landless labourers, periodically attack government property and police.

Authorities in an eastern Indian state are recruiting young tribesmen to fight Maoist rebels, officials said, a move human rights groups criticised for putting civilians in the firing line.

The decision by the state of Orissa mirrors a campaign, the “Salwa Judum” or “Campaign for Peace” in the neighbouring state of Chhattisgarh, in which government-backed militias have fought Maoist guerrillas since 2005.

Authorities in neighbouring Orissa say their new campaign involving tribal villagers would strengthen the fight against the Maoists who began their insurgency about four decades ago.

But similar efforts to enlist vulnerable and little trained villagers in other states have failed to tilt the balance in favour of the government.

Instead, Maoists have retaliated by attacking villages and abducted and executed Salwa Judum sympathisers, US-based Human Rights Watch said in a report in July.

Orissa will recruit at least 2,000 tribal youths between 18 and 25 years old as special police officers in five Maoist-dominated districts of Malkangiri, Koraput, Gajapati, Raygada and Kandhamal.

A senior police official said the recruits would be trained for about three months and would be given police uniforms.

“The tribals know local language. They will be a great help to the force engaged in anti-Maoist operations,” deputy inspector general of police Sanjeeb Panda said, adding recruitment would be complete by December.

But local human rights groups are already sounding the alarm.

“Orissa is trying to pit the tribal against their own people,” Biswapriya Kanungo, a human rights activist and lawyer in Orissa, said.

Orissa is among a dozen Indian states fighting a Maoist insurgency that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has described as the country’s biggest internal security threat.—Reuters