REFUGEE

Maoist groups in India have been known to collaborate with their counterparts across the border in Nepal and also occasionally with sympathisers elsewhere in South Asia but a senior Naxal leader who surrendered in Maharashtra last week has claimed that a warfare expert from the Philippines visited and stayed in a Bastar Naxal camp in Abujmad for about a month to train cadres, indicating the global reach of the extremist movement.

“It was way back in 2001 that a man from the Philippines had come to train us in south Bastar,” Naxal leader Rainu told The Indian Express. “Also, two LTTE men had come twice for the same purpose,” he added.

One of the three tribal members in the 22-member Andhra cadre-dominated Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee created in 2007 to oversee activities in Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh, Rainu laid down arms saying he had had enough of what he called the romantic Naxal mirage of liberation after 22 years in the movementThe Philippines has its own Maoist insurgent movement which operates under the banner of the New People’s Army. But Rainu’s claim has raised questions among security agencies of how a Filipino could manage to find his way to a Naxal camp in India.

“It is not very difficult for LTTE men to pass off as Indians, but how the Naxals managed a safe passage for a Filipino into territory where even the police can’t go, and back, is very curious,” said a security official who did not want to be named.

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