Maoist rebels kill 8 in eastern India

international | miscellaneous | other press Monday July 02, 2007 14:08 by kbranno kevinbrannigan at hotmail dot com

Suspected Maoist rebels killed eight people, including six police officers, in eastern India in attacks on two police stations, officials said Sunday.

The rebels used dynamite to blow up a police station in the remote state of Bihar, killing four police officers and two villagers late Saturday. They also stole weapons from the police, said police official S.K. Bhardwaj.

The militants then attacked a second police station, throwing homemade bombs and killing two more police officers, Bhardwaj said.

The Maoist rebels are called Naxalites — named after Naxalbari, a village outside the state capital Calcutta where the movement was born in 1967. They're active in seven Indian states.

The rebels, who claim to be inspired by Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong, have been demanding land and jobs for agricultural laborers and the poor.

There was no way of contacting the rebels, who did not immediately comment on the attack.

Source
The Associated Press
Published: July 1, 2007

Who are the Naxalites ?

Naxalite or Naxalism is an informal name given to revolutionary communist groups that were born out of the Sino-Soviet split in the Indian communist movement. The term comes from Naxalbari, a small village in West Bengal, where a leftist section of Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)) led by Charu Majumdar and Kanu Sanyal led a militant peasant uprising in 1967, trying to develop a "revolutionary opposition" in order to establish "revolutionary rule" in India.