Andhra Pradesh

Tacit Maoist support to illegal slate quarrying?

By Ramesh Susarla

GUNTUR, MARCH 28. The illegal quarrying of slate stones in the Bollapalli mandal of Guntur district has tacit support of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) naxalites, which came into focus during the Chilakaluripet police station attack incident recently.

The Guntur district police have now focused on the ways to tighten the noose around illegal slate stone quarry owners, who allegedly have a mutual relationship with naxalites for hindrance-free continuation of their activity. The ownership of a lorry in which naxalites escaped from Chilakaluripet was traced to a slate stone dealer.

40 illegal quarries

The police sources point out that about 40 illegal quarries operating in the Guntur region of Nallamala forest area send about Rs.2,000 per quarry per month to the naxalites and in turn provide logistic support to them as and when required by the Maoists. The Tata Sumo and Commander vehicles in which naxalites arrived at the police station were allegedly provided by these people.

Only one person has quarrying licence in the area for slate stones and he obtains transport permit for all loads of lorries carrying stones from these unauthoriesed quarries by paying a fee. The police were contemplating strict check on all the vehicles going out of the region with slate stone loads by making a record of their numbers and cross-verifying with daily production capacity of the licensed quarry.

To be more specific laboratory tests would also be got done from samples collected from the lorries to ensure they came from the authorized ones. All the lorries with suspicious consignments would be detained. This, the police feel was one way of restricting unauthorised quarrying and snapping a source of revenue for the Maoists.

The police have identified people responsible for the Chilakaluripet incident and were in the hot pursuit of bringing them to book.

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