Whenever the CPI (Maoist) engages the paramilitary and police forces resulting in some killings the media, particularly the electronic media, goes gaga about it for two or three days. TV channels conduct high-pitched debates scorning Indian Maoists as terrorists to be bumped off using even the army and air force. But when the operating security forces kill adivasis and Maoists among them, the news is completely blacked out. There will be no shrill voices in the media about such incidents or demands to label the killers “cowards”.

A serious atmosphere started prevailing in the political domain of Bihar after the Maoists reportedly killed an assistant sub-inspector of the Bihar Military Police, Lucas Tete. He was one of the four hostages captured after the Maoist ambush on a Bihar Military Police camp on August 29 on the hills of Kajra in the Lakhisarai forests of southeastern Bihar. This is a major incident of its kind in Bihar after the most elusive civil war codenamed ‘Operation Green Hunt’ was launched by home minister P Chidambaram almost a year ago. Ironically, the first anniversary of the initiation of what civil society has rightly termed as a war against the people is presently being celebrated in a most bizarre manner in a state where the operation has been supposedly implemented reluctantly by its government.

In the incident the Maoists killed seven police personnel, injured many and took away a huge cache of arms, along with four cops on that fateful day in Lakhisarai. However, more dramatic events were yet to unfold.
 
As Nitish Kumar himself comes on the screen and admits of his helplessness, it is quite an unexpected detour in his ‘successful career’ as a chief minister. At this point of time, the deus ex machina (god out of the machine) appears, and promises all support to secure the hostages alive.

Nitish Kumar asks for more forces. Chidambaram grants his wish immediately. Additional forces are sent to beef up the morale of the already beleaguered security forces in action. Nitish Kumar never utters a word all through the show to indicate that he would consider the option of releasing the eight Maoists in exchange of the four cops. Neither does he ever reject the demand of the Maoists. A perfect statesman! For the first five days he only maintained that he had received no information of the ransom and no one from the Maoists’ side had communicated to him or his administration. Then he called upon the Maoists to tell him what they wanted.

The bizarre theatrics of abduction, killing and release of cops stretched for more than a week on the television screens. Finally on September 6 the curtain to this theatre of absurdity came down when the Maoists released the three policemen, ironically, along with the announcement of the Bihar assembly elections by the Central Election Commission.

This theatre of farce couldn’t have been consumed even with a magic spell of attraction if the Maoists couldn’t play up to their role marvellously. At the outset, it was the sutradhar or the interlocutor, Avinash (not Agnivesh), who announced himself as the spokesperson of the Maoists and also announced the ransom (the release of eight of his imprisoned comrades). If Nitish Kumar failed to meet this demand, Avinash warned that the four policemen in their custody would be killed. On the fourth day, Avinash announced the killing of Abhay Yadav, one of the four hostages. But the body which was sent the next day out of the forest was that of Lucas Tete, a Jharkhandi adivasi. Statements and appeals from the democrats from the cities from all over India for the release of the three remaining hostages were finally responded to, and then Avinash announced that the Maoists would release the hostages. A man clad in saffron, who identified himself as top Maoist leader Kishanji, appears before the family members of the abducted cops in the full glare of the media in Begusarai, and promises their release.

No one knows what was discussed in the all-party meeting called by Nitish Kumar in a heated political atmosphere on the eve of the assembly elections. Emerging out of meeting, he nevertheless announces his government’s intent to sit for talks with the Maoists, promising a safe passage for those underground Maoists who would come to attend the talks. Others wait in suspicion. But the release gets delayed for more than 24 hours for unknown reasons. The melodrama ends on a happy note with the release of the three policemen and their family reunion, and Nitish Kumar inviting the Maoists to join the mainstream and participate in the ensuing Bihar elections.
In the old story, Vikramaditya, the emperor of Ujjain, is challenged to bring a recalcitrant Betal or the vampire spirit from a tree in a cemetery. Vikramaditya, like  civil society of our times, aspires to bring peace. But to do this he has to get the Betal down the tree and carry the body out of the graveyard. As a rule he has to keep silence during this time. The Betal (in the form a corpse) tells Vikramaditya a story each time he ventures to trap him. At the end of every story the vampire poses some riddles about it. At the end of our own story also at least three mysterious questions remain unanswered for our own civil society Vikramadityas.

Why did the Maoists demanded the swap of four policemen with eight of their imprisoned comrades when they knew that the government attached no importance to the ordinary policemen? Why did the Maoists killed Lucas Tete, a tribal, and not a Yadav, Sinha or Khan among the four abducted cops? Why did the Maoists release the three policemen rather than holding on to their demand, and killing them when their demands were not met?
The Betal in the corpse would warn that if Vikram does know the answers and decides not to answer, his skull will break into a thousand pieces. Vikram couldn’t resist answering the riddles even at the same time knowing that the Betal will disappear as soon as he breaks his silence. And the corpse does disappear. At the end of our story, our own Vikramadityas have no answers to the riddles, but they would begin a vociferous debate on whether the Betal should be posing these questions at all. In fact, they could not decide who the Betal was in the first place – the Maoists or the government or the media. Needless to add, in all the noise, the Betal disappeared anyway. You have to wait for the next chance for Vikram to succeed when the next Maoist ambush meets the security corps.

The Betal may have gone away for the time being, but the questions he has raised remain. The Maoists announced that their leadership decided to release the hostages following the appeals from the democrats. Before this point of time the leadership of the Maoists doesn’t figure anywhere. Does it mean that they would have killed their hostages if the appeals weren’t made? Again, why did they kill one of them? The appeals came out from the very beginning. Why were the same appeals ignored earlier but accepted later?

Any game of abduction cannot be played without issuing a threat of killing the hostage. If the other side is sure that the hostages will not be killed, why should it pay the ransom? But when the abduction is not for the individual selfish gains, what happens to the act? In the political domain, how could the CPI (Maoist) conduct itself by killing their hostages? In the Lakhisarai case, the hostages weren’t merely hostages because they were caught in a gun battle amidst a declared programme of war by the Indian state. Therefore, they were prisoners of war. Can the CPI (Maoist) kill the prisoners of war in their custody?

It’s not that the CPI (Maoist) has no policy understanding on how to handle hostages and prisoners of war. Kishanji, a Polit buro member of the CPI (Maoist), had announced in October 2009 that Atindranath Dutta, the office-in-charge of Sankrail Police Station, West Midnapur, under their custody was a prisoner of war and they would do no harm to him. But this announcement did not prevent the West Bengal administration from releasing the prisoners as the public pressure mounted on the government. As announced, the officer was released in exchange of adivasi women prisoners from Lalgarh in the state government’s custody. The West Bengal government justified this act by claiming that the women prisoners released in exchange were not involved in serious crimes. If that was the case, why were they kept under imprisonment in the first place without even allowing bail? That question was never answered.

Regrettably in Lakhisarai, a prisoner of war, Lucas Tete, was killed. The remaining three hostages were released under pressure from civil society, if we are to believe what Avinash told the media. In this case, the union and Bihar governments didn’t feel any pressure to release the eight Maoists in exchange for the abducted policemen, as their social status was not weighty enough. There is no other reason whatsoever. Because we know from a number of such cases in Andhra Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, the northeast and recently in West Bengal, that hostages were swapped with the release of prisoners as demanded by the abductors.

The Maoists in Lakhisarai bungled in a serious way. They shouldn’t have offered the barter of prisoners of war in their custody as if they were mere abducted hostages. Prisoners of war on both sides could be swapped at any point of time. There was no need to issue a threat of killing them or actually kill one of them to pressurise the government. It is altogether a different issue that the Indian state doesn’t recognise any democratic procedure or principle in its ugly war against the poor people of this country. It simply acts as an occupying military power in the most backward regions of our country without following internationally recognised norms of internal conflicts. But by no means revolutionary forces like CPI (Maoist) could act arbitrarily even in some incidents. The legitimacy for social transformatory forces lies in their consistent policies and ideology and their practice.

Azad, the spokesperson of CPI (Maoist) who was killed by the Indian state two months ago, responded to the beheading of a police intelligence officer, Francis Induwar, in Jharkhand by his party colleagues in an interview published in an English weekly a few months before his killing. He categorically stated that “the case of Francis Induvar is an exception and not the rule”. He further made it clear that “...cruelty is the trait of the policeman who serves the exploiting classes. For the Maoist revolutionaries who serve the masses of the people and aspire to build a new socialist society free of all class exploitation, cruelty is an anathema. We will educate our cadre so that such beheadings do not occur in future”.

It would be definitely ambitious to expect an impeccable conduct of affairs from the revolutionary forces while they fight an unequal and most brutal war from their adversaries but such major incidents as Lakhisarai could be certainly avoidable.

The stories may fly to distant shores after they are being told. But their influence stays home for ever. Betal asks questions endlessly to distract Vikramaditya like our media tries with civil society. However, the pertinent questions of our times seek resolution in a fundamental way.