Jharkhand Maoists being trained in People Liberation Army's Myanmar camps

GUWAHATI: Maoists from Jharkhand are now being trained in the camps of Manipur's People Liberation Army (PLA) located at Mindat in the southern Chin state of Myanmar, according to a recent government report on Maoist activities in the northeastern region, which is turning out to be their new base.

"The two groups signed an agreement 'for better understanding' in September, 2008 and the first batch of three Maoist cadres from Jharkhand trained at the PLA's 251 battalion camp at Mindat. Maoists now plan to send their cadres to Manipur to be trained by the PLA," a security source said.

The Maoists of Assam were first trained in Lohit district of neighbouring Arunachal Pradesh and the first training camp was started as recently as April last year. "At the camp in Lohit, training in arms was imparted by Maoists leaders from Assam. The camp was closed down after two Adivasi trainees fled the place," the source said.

These reports of the PLA training Maoists in Myanmar, based on confession statements of arrested PLA leaders here, have come at a time when the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Monday filed a chargesheet at the special court here against the PLA for imparting training to the cadres of CPI (Maoist) and supplying arms and ammunition to the outfit.

"The investigation established that in and around June 2006, the PLA leadership met the top leaders of CPI (Maoist), followed by several other meetings between the two terrorist organisations between 2006 and 2008," the NIA chargesheet says.

It adds that in 2008, senior leaders of CPI (Maoist) met PLA members in a foreign country and "signed a joint declaration for the unified action of waging war against India".

"In this meeting, CPI (Maoist) requested the PLA to provide them sophisticated weapons and the PLA in turn sought help for procurement of ammonium nitrate (explosive) from the former," the NIA stated.

The NIA chargesheet states that a team of PLA cadres comprising four senior functionaries had visited the Dandakaranya forest in Chhattisgarh sometime in the middle of 2009.

"Investigation has established that two training programmes, comprising signal training and military training, were carried out for CPI (Maoist) cadres by the PLA in Saranda Forest of Jharkhand. The first programme was carried out from 11 September, 2010 to 20 November, 2010 and the second started on 7 October, 2010 and ended on 10 November, 2010," the chargesheet adds.