Faced with a shortage of cadre and difficulty in making new recruitments, Naxalite organisations have focussed their attention on the police force itself and are making an attempt to instigate revolt among the men in uniform.

Pamphlets calling upon the men in the police department and para-military forces to take up arms against the very system for which they work have been found in parts of the Naxalite-infested areas in Vidarbha region of Maharashtra.

This is probably the first time that the Maoists are directly trying to provoke the sentiments of the police and para-military forces, and marks a major shift from their policy of directing such efforts towards the general public.

The outlaws normally treat the law enforcement agencies as their prime enemy and make them a target of their violent activities.

Officials say the focus on the police force could be a strategy being adopted by the outlaws in view of dwindling cadre and poor response to recruitment drives.

The pamphlets, purportedly distributed by the Communist Party of India (Maoist), said the present situation of the police was no different than it was during the British rule, when a force consisting of Indian recruits was used to suppress the voice of their own countrymen.

The present rulers, it was alleged, were using the force to inhumanly stifle the voice of legitimate protests in all parts of the country. This had earned for the police nothing but the wrath and hatred of the commonpeople, the pamphlets said.

The police had to compromise with their conscience to use arms against their own brethren, and were also living a life full of tension and uncertainty, with no guarantee of their jobs, the pamphlets alleged.

Asserting that the party had full sympathy for the men in uniform, the pamphlets called upon them to take up arms against the system that exploited them and had ''made their lives miserable and filled it with depression, tension and problems.''

On a sentimental note, the pamphlets said the policemen were like the farmers and workers of the country, except that they wore uniforms provided by the government.

''Capitalist and imperialist powers had shaken their roots whenever soldiers fought against an unjust system together with labourers and farmers. History is abound with such instances,'' the pamphlets said, adding that the struggle to create a new social system would be ''incomplete without the participation of the police.''

Commenting on the content of the pamphlets, Special Inspector General of Police for Anti-Naxalite Operation (ANO) Pankaj Gupta told UNI that this was clearly an attempt by Maoists to divide the society and to create rift in it.

''For the naxalites, the police are enemy number one. They are,therefore, trying to instigate and divide the policemen,'' he said. The ranks of the naxalite cadre had decreased drastically because of the strict action by the law-enforcement agencies, Mr Gupta said.

In addition, the naxalite outfits were getting poor response to their own recruitment drives, and were finding it difficult to maintain the numbers of their cadre, he said. ''It appears that the Maoists have, therefore, adopted a policy of targeting the police themselves and decrease their morale. They seem to have adopted a ploy to influence the police adversely,'' he said.

The pamphlets appeared to have been issued by Maoist organisations since the issues raised in the content and the language used are similar to that of the outlaws, Mr Gupta said. However, the pamphlets were on plain paper and not on any 'stationery' or letterhead of any naxalite organisation, he pointed out.

Late last year, the police had found pamphlets purportedly distributed by the CPI (Maoist) in the district calling upon dalits to take to arms to fight against injustice. The pamphlets said armed struggle was the only way to stop the injustice against the dalits.

Mr Gupta said at the time that naxalites were trying to incite the passions of the dalit youths against 'injustice' and provoke them to take to arms. This could be a deliberate ploy to attract the youth to the illegal activity since naxal organisations had been finding it difficult to make fresh recruitments into the cadre, he said.

Shortly before that, the police had found a handwritten note in Gondi language in the pocket of a naxalite killed in an encounter in Gadchiroli district, calling for road blockades against the killing of four members of a dalit family by villagers in Khairlanji in Bhandara district of the region.

The note also mentioned that information of the Khairlanji incident had been 'sent to headquarters'. The note was found from the pocket of the naxalite identified as Chamru Gota, who was among the three naxalites killed in an encounter on December 22 last year.

Deccan Herald