The Jharkhand police blamed the contractor who has undertaken road work under the Saranda Development Plan for the torching of his construction machinery at Ushariya village by Maoists on November 26 saying that the contractor violated security instructions from the paramilitary posted in the Maoist-affected region in Jharkhand’s West Singhbhum district.

“The contractor had been specifically asked to park his machinery at the CRPF (central reserve police force) camp at Chottanagra, some 8 kilometres away every evening after the day’s work got over. But he continued to violate it. In fact, he skipped a crucial security meeting despite being summoned for it,” the inspector general (operations) of the Jharkhand police, S N Pradhan, told Governance Now. “Besides, we have been insisting something is amiss as the Ushariya incident doesn’t have the typical footprints of a Maoist attack although we are convinced that it is indeed the left ultras’ involvement. We are investigating for all possible angles including if the attack was staged in collusion with the locals and the contractor.”

Pradhan denied any intelligence lapse on the part of the security set up in Saranda. However, he noted that the security arrangement in the region needed to be beefed up. “We have set up six of the thirteen new camps that were proposed for the region in the past one year. By March, we need to set up the rest along crucial axes of the forest. We have also decided to treat the entire forest as one corridor for combing operations.” The security operations, so far, have concentrated on the Saranda division of Asia’s largest sal-forest that covers large swathes of West Singhbhum district and parts of neighbouring Odisha’s Sundergarh and Keonjhar districts even though the state police and the central paramilitary forces have been actively chasing the left ultras in other parts of the forest such as Porahat, a few kilometres from Saranda.

Locals say that the Porahat region offers an accessible pit-stop for the rebels. On being asked if the security personnel in Saranda failed to pre-empt the Ushariya incident, Pradhan said, “We have been uneasy with the claim that Saranda has been cleared of Maoists. But there is no denying that their hold has been dealt a debilitating blow by last year’s operations. But we need more forces in Saranda to secure the region entirely. We haven’t been able to do so because a chunk of the state police is now engaged at the border with Bihar because of an ongoing operation. In a few days time, we will be able to deploy some of it in Saranda. Besides, the set up in Saranda needs more central police personnel. We have asked the centre for it.”

A second combing operation after last year’s Operation Anaconda in July-August, Operation Anaconda 2 was launched two weeks after the Ushariya incident. Governance Now saw troop movement from the CRPF camp at Chottanagra towards the inner reaches of the forest.

However, at Ushariya, there are just cautious whispers that tell the tale. On being asked if the security personnel ever visited the construction site before the incident, a villager, refusing to be named said, “The only time we saw them (the CRPF personnel) here was when they were passing by the area during one of their patrols a few months back. No one visited the work site before the incident. Even after the incident, they got here only after nearly 20 hours.”

Another man who transported rations and fuel for the workers at the site said that never during his visits had he seen any police presence. “However, there was no inkling that this would happen. Everybody seemed to think that the work would proceed unimpeded. The workers never mentioned any threats.” The Maoists, however, have continually issued threats against road work in Saranda ever since the Saranda Development Plan was announced.

The road at Ushariya, was a stretch of the 13 kilometres road from Chottanagra to Thalkobad being built as part of a 130 km network of concrete Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY). The network has been estimated to cost up to Rs 130 crore, almost half of the entire SDP budget, according to recent calculations.

(Sarthak Ray who spent four months in Saranda is not stationed there anymore but keeps track of developments in the region.)