Red Corridor snippets

Naxalism, which started off as a people’s movement, has now become a nearly Rs 1,500 crore organised extortion business in the form of ‘levy’, say police and central security officials. The CPI (Maoist) and especially its splinter groups, which extort the money, hardly pump it back for running the movement but use it instead to maintain the luxurious lifestyles for their masters, the officials said. The Naxal literature and documents seized by central security agencies and state police forces during their operations have revealed intricate details of the levy these groups extort and which run into several hundred crores every year. Though the CPI (Maoist) still remains the most prominent Naxal group in Jharkhand, there are other splinter groups which, too, have now started imposing levy, besides kidnapping, looting and narcotics trade that earn them around Rs 300 crore as annual income from the state. A conservative estimate of the income generated from the ‘levy’ in the seven top Naxal-infested states—commonly referred to as the Red corridor—amounts to nearly Rs 1,500 crore. In most cases, the amount generated in the form of levy usually goes into funding a “luxurious lifestyle’’ of Naxal chiefs. “The chiefs lead a luxurious life with all modern facilities. Though they forcibly recruit children in their cadre, their own kids study in good public schools,’’ one of the officials said. Besides the fixed levy, the Left-wing extremists also demand money from industries functioning in the areas “as and when they need’’ and even issue receipts for it. “The groups operate no longer for ideology but purely for extortion,’’ CRPF DIG (Jharkhand) Alok Aaj said. Sometimes even the contractors approach the Naxals with money to “blow up the roads built by them as they used poor material”. “As they are blown up, no quality inspection takes place,’’ Jharkhand DGP V D Ram said.