Fighting an invisible enemy

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Twenty-four- year- old Venkatesh (name changed) is a commando with the Anti- Naxal Force (ANF) by choice. His assignment: Hunt down Maoists in the jungles of Dakshina Kannada and its surroundings.

But his initial excitement at his new assignment started to die once he began combing the deep jungles of the Western Ghats with their poisonous snakes and blood sucking leeches, sometimes in pouring rain with his team members.

For the last 12 months he has walked every inch of the forests where the Naxals are believed to be hiding, but come up with nothing.

Every time an intelligence input is received it only frustrates him more as the tip-off is usually given a day after the Naxals have left the spot they were seen at.

“Nobody wants us here. The Naxals for obvious reasons and the villagers because they see as intruders. We don’t get proper intelligence and when we do receive it , it's already stale.

Sometimes we don’t know who we are fighting and even if the Naxals are active here or not. But our combing operations must go on,” Venkatesh says ruefully.

Once the ANF team confronted what seemed to be a group of Naxals in the forest ranges of the Kudremukh National Park, their favourite hide- out, but did not fire on them as it was afraid to act without orders from the top.

“There were eight of them, including two girls, but the head of our combing team decided to inform headquarters even though the Naxals had seen us and begun running.

Our seniors don't back us if we fire at Naxals during the combing operations and so we usually dont like taking chances . Also, the photographs given to us of these Naxals were taken a decade ago and they could have changed in appearance..

We can do little even when locals sometimes pass off strangers in their homes, who seem suspicously like Maoists, as visiting relatives,” the commando recounts, adding, " We are lucky that so far landmines have not been used by them in Karnataka.

But we need better facilities when we are serving in such extreme conditions.” A senior police officer agrees that life is difficult for the ANF commandos. “ The government must increase the pay scale and security cover to boost the morale of the commandos,” he said.