HYDERABAD: India’s southern state of Andhra Pradesh banned a violent Maoist rebel group on Wednesday, two days after rebels killed 10 people, including a lawmaker and bureaucrat.
Last summer, the state government lifted an eight-year ban on the Communist Party of India (Maoists), which says it is fighting for the rights of landless labourers in the agricultural state, and had been engaged in peace talks since then.
Violence surged after peace talks with the Maoists broke down in January. The guerillas have killed more than 175 people since the talks broke down.
“In view of Monday’s massacre and the Maoists’ violent spree in the last one year, the government has decided to re-impose the ban,” state interior minister K. Jana Reddy told a news conference.
The ban comes hours before World Bank president, Paul Wolfowitz, was to arrive in Andhra Pradesh as part of his three-day India visit. The state is seeking funds for irrigation projects.
Wolfowitz is also scheduled to travel to the state’s Mehmoobnagar district where Monday’s attack took place.
“We have waited all along for negotiations to succeed, but they are spilling more blood than speaking their demands,” Andhra Pradesh police chief Swaranjit Sen said.
The latest ban follows Monday’s attack while India was celebrating its independence day. The Maoists triggered a landmine as a government jeep passed and then shot the survivors and lobbed grenades into the vehicle.
Over 6,000 people have been killed in the decades-old revolt. Police say the group, banned many times in the past, has links with powerful Maoist rebels in Nepal through its comrades in the eastern state of Bihar that borders the Himalayan kingdom.—Reuters
