Tribal leader Manish Kunjam’s role in the 13-day-long hostage crisis that ended with release of Sukma district collector Alex Paul Menon on Thursday has come into sharp focus.
Mr Kunjam, an ex-MLA and national president of All-India Adivasi Mahasabha, reportedly played a crucial behind-the-scene role in the whole issue, beginning from making the first contact with the Naxal captors, intervening at the eleventh hour to prevent collapse of negotiations with the rebels to get 32-year-old IAS officer released.
Several questions, however, were raised in intelligence circles here on the circumstances in which the CPI leader from Sukma district stepped into the scene.
Mr Kunjam had earlier reportedly enjoyed Mr Menon’s confidence.
Intelligence sources said a day after Mr Menon, an asthma patient, was abducted on April 21, necessary medicines were delivered to his captors though a scribe of the neighbouring Dantewada district. But much to the surprise of local officials, Maoists issued a warning on April 23 that the IAS officer was in a critical condition and asked the government to arrange medicines urgently.
Mr Kunjam had earlier turned down the Maoists’ offer to nominate him as one of theair three mediators. He, however, readily agreed to carry the medicines for the collector.
He triggered suspicion in both the official and intelligence circles when he spent almost one-and-a-half days with Naxals. He disappeared from the scene becoming incommunicado soon after he surfaced at Sukma two days later to declare that he had delivered the medicines to the Naxal captors.
He again surfaced when the Naxals threatened not to honour their commitment to release the collector by 3 pm on Thursday if the government did not take any concrete step to facilitate release of two women Naxals — Shanti Priay Reddy alias Malati and Meena Choudhury.