Latehar police intensify poster war against Maoists, poppy growers

| | DALTONGANJ
  • 0

Latehar police intensify poster war against Maoists, poppy growers

Friday, 07 February 2020 | PNS | DALTONGANJ

Latehar police have intensified its poster war against CPI Maoists and the poppy cultivators. Big posters with names of dreaded Maoists like Khudi Ganjhu, Nandkishore Yadav, Dinesh Nageshiya etc and a note of  admonition to poppy cultivators are being pasted on the walls of the houses of the people.

Sources said the house owners do not resist police move in pasting posters on their walls but they wait for Deepawli festival to come when their walls have a wash of either lime or cow dung when they will get rid of it.

A Balumath resident preferring anonymity said, “Police paste , Maoists write. Our walls are their posts. And we the inmates of our houses just remain a silent spectator to this war of words between the police and the Maoists.”

Sources said the poster war is all around Latehar district but it is most evident in Balumath and Herhunj police stations just because of its proximity to Chatra district which still holds immense notoriety for extremism and poppy cultivation.

Tourists’ hub Netarhat is also witnessing police’s posters against Maoists. Sources said 13 hard core Maoists operative in Latehar district with cash reward on their heads fill the size of the police posters.

SP Latehar Prashant Anand said poster wars have unnerved the Maoists and the poppy growers as well.

Their real faces now stand unmasked. The posters tell people not to yield to the pressure of the Maoists if they ask for cell phones, bikes or force individual to become their courier as it is too perilous for those who so toe the line of the extremists.

However police have most intelligently refrained from depicting graphically or by word exploitation of girls and women at the hands of the Maoists in posters prepared by the police sensing it will rub the sentiments of the common people on this sensitive issue the wrong way.

Sources said police poster is conspicuously silent over the sex exploits of the Maoists.

Anand said police posters urge parents not to give their children to extremists as then their future will be devastated by the extremists.

He further said posters make aware extremists also of the state new surrender policy for them.

SDPO Balumath Ranveer Singh said that there is a decline in the cultivation of poppy in Latehar’s two police stations Balumath and Herhunj where now farmers who used to grow poppy on their raiyyati lands are abstaining from doing this.

SDPO Singh said it is all because of police tightening the noose around such farmers.

However, Singh conceded acres of forest land or gair majrua lands which are close to any water body  are still vulnerable locations for poppy growing as here the grower has no risk of law taking action against him since forest land/ gair majrua land is never the cup of any individual but of the state’s landed property.

Ranveer Singh said police use drones in inaccessible areas to locate patches of poppy cultivation and once it is established the crop is destroyed. Singh said tractors are used to crush the crop but where tractors cannot ply cops and chowkidars use sticks to beat the poppy plants.  

Sunday Edition

CAA PASSPORT TO FREEDOM

24 March 2024 | Kumar Chellappan | Agenda

CHENNAI EXPRESS IN GURUGRAM

24 March 2024 | Pawan Soni | Agenda

The Way of Bengal

24 March 2024 | Shobori Ganguli | Agenda

The Pizza Philosopher

24 March 2024 | Shobori Ganguli | Agenda

Astroturf | Lord Shiva calls for all-inclusiveness

24 March 2024 | Bharat Bhushan Padmadeo | Agenda

Interconnected narrative l Forest conservation l Agriculture l Food security

24 March 2024 | BKP Sinha/ Arvind K jha | Agenda