Maoists are ‘worst’ rights abusers in India, says study
By IANSTuesday, April 13, 2010
NEW DELHI - Maoist guerrillas are “worst” violators of human rights among all insurgent groups in India, a study on torture said Tuesday.
The Asian Centre for Human Rights report “Torture in India, 2010″, released a week after Leftist rebels killed 76 security personnel in Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada forests, says Maoists were brutally killing their hostages after abduction.
Among all the armed opposition groups in India, the Naxalites or Maoists are probably the worst human rights violators,” the report said.
Alleging that Maoists have been “responsible for brutal killing of their hostages after abduction”, the report said: “Often the hostages are killed by slitting their throats or beheading, with sanctions from their people’s courts or ‘Jan Adalats’.”
“In blatant disregard for the international humanitarian law, the Maoists continued to kill civilians on the allegation of being ‘police informers’, members of the anti-Maoist civilian militia such as Salwa Judum and for not obeying their diktats, the report said.
The report has cited at least 17 examples of Maoists killing civilians, including the Sep 4 slaughter of four villagers in Bijapur of Chhattisgarh on suspicion of being police informers.
They were abducted three days earlier. According to police, the victims were tortured and stabbed to death, it said.
