Police officer warns ICRC, MSF on treating Maoists

RAIPUR - A senior police officer in Chhattisgarh said Friday that he has cautioned the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) about possible prosecution if they continued treating Maoists.

“I don’t welcome the ICRC and the MSF treating Maoists in Dantewada district who are actually killing police and civilians in dozens,” S.R.P. Kalluri, senior superintendent of police in Dantewada, told IANS over the phone.

“These two are foreign organisations and have to show discretion in whom they provide treatment. Coming from abroad and treating people of a banned terror organisation is not a good idea,” he said.

“I have sounded a caution to them and told them clearly that they are liable to prosecution under the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act that is designed to take action for having any direct or indirect link with Maoists,” Kalluri explained.

The officer added: “These two organisations are deliberately going to Maoist camps and spending weeks. The foreign doctors should know what they are doing. I am from an enforcement agency and can’t welcome them having extra love for Maoists, but not for people injured in Maoist brutalities.”

He said that two Maoists and a medical supplier were arrested early this week and that they revealed how ICRC and MSF are helping Maoists in forested interiors in the cover of humanitarian aid.

But Vishwaranjan, Chhattisgarh’s director general of police (DGP), did not seem very worried.

“There are some inputs coming from the interiors of Bastar region indicating MSF has some contacts with local Maoist cadres. We are looking into the matter, but there is no intention to stop their activities as they are doing their work as per their charter,” Vishwaranjan told IANS.

The iron-ore rich Dantewada district is described as India’s worst Maoist-hit district where rebels have been running a parallel administration in its interiors since the late 1980s.

The rebels had carried out the biggest attack in the district in April last year and massacred 76 policemen in a single incident. This was the biggest attack carried out by Maoists in India since they launched their armed movement in 1967 from a village in West Bengal.

The ICRC and the MSF have been involved in Dantewada district for a long time. Government officials have sometimes raise the issue about “easy access of wounded Maoists to foreign doctors of these two organisations”.