December 27, 2002	Friday	Shawwal 22, 1423

BAIRICHAK (India), Dec 26: Left-wing rebels gunned down seven relatives of a police officer’s family on Wednesday night in an eastern Indian village in a revenge attack.

The assailants killed the low-caste farming family in Bairichak town, 40kms from Patna. The rebels belonged to the Sunil Tigers, an offshoot of the Maoist People’s War Group, according to police.

The dead included a one-year-old boy, a 10-year-old girl and a girl in her early teens, police said.

A senior police official said the killings were spurred by revenge as the policeman whose family was slaughtered had been instrumental in the arrest of the father of a rebel leader.

“Why did they attack my family? Was their only fault that they were related to a policeman?” said the officer, Kauhal Kumar Verma, as he waited for the bodies at the morgue.

The officer, who is around 50 and was spared, wept inconsolably and was bloody from banging his head on a stone.

Most residents in the village of about 250 had fled their homes, fearing further retaliation.

Kumar called the attack on the officer “a dastardly act.”

“It shows the level of frustration of the killers, who have been pushed hard against the wall by the police,” he said.

Police officials said intense combing operations had been launched and all roads in the area had been sealed to prevent an escape route for the rebels. —AFP