A day after violent clashes between tribals and the police claimed at least five lives in northern Kerala's Wayanad district, the police said the tribesmen are getting trained by the People's War, the deadly Naxalite outfit based in Andhra Pradesh.
The clashes erupted after tribals, who had forcibly encroached and occupied the Muthanga wildlife sanctuary and held several people hostage, killed a police constable when a Kerala Police battalion tried to evict them.
Locals said at least four tribals were killed in police firing during the violent clashes, but officially the government said only one tribal activist was killed.
The Kerala Assembly on Thursday came to a standstill after the Communist parties-led opposition demanded a judicial probe into the incident. But Chief Minister A K Antony rejected the demand saying that his government has taken adequate measures to rehabilitate the landless tribals in the state.
Antony said there were "some other forces" behind the sudden, militant transformation of a section of Kerala's 400,000 tribals, who have been demanding distribution of forestland for their livelihood.
Woman tribal leader C K Janu, who heads the Adivasi Gothra Maha Sabha, has led the tribal agitation.
According to a report of the intelligence wing of the police, which was submitted to Anthony recently, there are indications that PW volunteers from Andhra Pradesh have been giving training to a section of tribal activists in the forest ranges across Wayanad.
"This is the first time that the tribals have come out with weapons to attack the police personnel. We have enough leads pointing that the attack the tribals unleashed on the police was similar to the ones that PW guerillas undertake," a senior police official in Kerala told rediff.com.
He disclosed that in many interior places across Wayanad district the posters of PW have been appearing. "We also managed to identify a few people among the tribals who did not know Malayalam. But all indications are that they were part of the training squad from the PW," the officer pointed out.
While the police are searching for Janu and other tribal leaders, who have gone underground, the Kerala police have alerted the Andhra Pradesh counterparts on sharing information about the PW tactics and training squads.
Government estimates said there are nearly 400,000 tribals in various hill districts of Kerala. But 200,000 tribals in the state are landless, according to Janu. "We are the original inhabitants of the land and the forest. Now we have been alienated in our own territory. This is cruel," she pointed out during one of her statements recently.
Last year, the Antony government had entered into a pact with various tribal organisations after the tribal leaders held a fast unto death outside the state assembly. According to the pact, the government promised to provide land to all landless Adivasi families, a special economic scheme to support the tribals till their land become fully productive, a new health-education-sanitation scheme for them and enactment of special laws to protect tribal women from all types of exploitation.
Antony then had announced that the distribution of land to tribals would begin soon. But Janu and other tribal leaders say that the Antony government has backtracked from these promises and have not implemented any of the proposals.
But the chief minister told the assembly on Thursday that his government has been very sincere in implementing its promise of land to landless tribals. Accordingly, he said, 1800 acres of land have already been distributed to the tribals in the past one year.
