By IANS,
Raipur : Chhattisgarh’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government is now reluctant to take up the offer for peace talks made by the Maoists twice recently, after the leftist rebels killed three CRPF troopers in an ambush Feb 19.
Spokesperson of Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee of the outlawed Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist), Pandu alias Pandanna, had offered twice within a month to hold peace talks with the government to find a solution to the decade-old Maoist militancy in the state.
“The government was seriously mulling the offer of the guerrillas but now we are least interested to pursue the peace talks offer as violence and dialogue can’t go together,” senior home department officials told IANS, while referring to the Feb 19 ambush in the state’s restive Bastar region.
Nine other CRPF personnel were injured in the incident.
The officials said top police officers and some security experts had serious doubts over the sincerity of Maoists’ peace talks, terming the move a ‘diversionary tactic’ by the rebels to buy time through persuading the government to halt anti-Maoist operations so that they could regroup and also reassess their strategy to overcome relentless police attacks on their bases.
Maoists have killed some 1,250 persons in the state since 2004, with the majority of casualties reported from the mineral-rich, forested Bastar.