Suspected Maoists on Sunday abducted 20 people in four villages in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur district to “try them in Jan Adalat (People’s Court) for being police informers,” police sources said.
Police sources said five people, each from the villages of Loded, Pamogal, Gorola and Rudraram, were forcibly taken away at gun points by the ultras early in the morning. The rebels also circulated pamphlets in these villages stating that the hostages would be tried in the people’s courts for being police informers and punished, if found guilty.
The Maoist literature said six of them have already been sentenced to death by these courts earlier and they would executed as per the orders.
All the captives are in the age group of 18 to 22 years, the police said.
These villages fall under Gopalpatnam police station. The police is, however, tight-lipped on the incident.
“We have not received any complaint from the family members of the reported kidnapped villagers,” the police officer in the Gopalpatnam police station, who answered the telephone call by this correspondent, said.
Police sources said the family members of the hostages preferred not to approach the police fearing that the ultras may harm their kin. “Usually, the families whose relations have been abducted and later executed by the Maoists never report the matter to the police, apprehending backlash from the Maoists,” a senior police officer of the district told this newspaper. The police is also reluctant to launch search operations to rescue the villagers fearing that it might also be a ploy by the Maoists to lure the security forces to their traps in the jungles. At least 40 villagers have been kidnapped by the Maoists in the district in the last fortnight. 28 of them have been killed after being indicted by the people’s courts as police informers.