Date:23/12/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/12/23/stories/2007122354960600.htm

Andhra Pradesh

Maoists vow to free Raji Reddy

Special Correspondent

‘Governments aware that Maoists alone can resist the neo-liberal policies and are perturbed’
‘Such arrests, murders of party leadership can never suppress the revolutionary war’

HYDERABAD: The Communist Party of India (Maoist) has declared that its guerrilla fighters would “certainly secure the release of the arrested leaders”, while maintaining that the Central and State Governments were concentrating on eliminating the Maoist Central and State-level leaders to completely suppress the ongoing people’s war in the country.

The Maoist assertion to get the arrested leaders released comes in the backdrop of the arrest of a top naxal leader Malla Raji Reddy alias Sattenna in Kerala last week.

The naxal leader, facing many criminal cases in Andhra Pradesh has been shifted to the high-security prison at Cherlapally on city outskirts after he was brought from Kerala.

Suppression campaign

Reacting to the arrest, the Maoist spokesperson Azad said in a statement on Saturday that Reddy’s arrest was part of a massive counter-revolutionary suppression campaign launched all over the country, especially after the successful conduct of the Maoist Unity Congress early this year.

The Governments are aware that it’s the Maoists alone who could resist the ‘neo-liberal’ policies and are perturbed by the militant struggles spearheaded by the party against special economic zones (SEZs) and displacement of peasantry.

However, such arrests or murders of party leadership could never suppress the revolutionary war in the country, Mr. Azad asserted. “As demonstrated by heroic jailbreak in Dantewada, our PLGA fighter will certainly secure the release of our arrested comrades and others languishing in jails,” the Maoist spokesperson maintained.