There is no direct connection. The police had a direct responsibility of protecting the Salwa Judum. Now, the Salwa Judum are kept in camps. We are not organising processions of the Salwa Judum.

I always thought that if you want to fight the Naxals, you cannot keep giving heavy protection to people taking processions from one place to another for giving lectures. Because that is the time when the Naxals will attack. There was a lot of pressure on me.

But there were Salwa Judum processions...

Yes, earlier there were. I allowed only one procession. I had to put 500 people to protect the people taking out the procession from two things. One, there is a tendency for people to get out of control... because passions can run high. And two, to bring them back home safely. There is a lot of political pressure on me, especially from those who were leading the agitation.

My security concerns are that I can only fight using the police, they [Salwa Judum] can play only a secondary or tertiary role in helping us like a guide.

Human rights activist have said the Salwa Judum is working in close nexus with the police and...

I have always said bring specific cases to me. You cannot say it is alleged. You have to come to the police and register an offence. If you don't want to come to the police, you can go to the superintendent of police. If you don't want to go to SP, you can go to the DGP.

If you can come to my office in Raipur, you will see that cases are being registered there.

But a Human Rights Watch report recently said there were 50 eyewitness accounts of violence and attacks involving government security forces. UNICEF has recorded eyewitness accounts as well.

The eyewitness accounts don't mean anything in a place like that. You see, if I take you to a place which is not dominated by the Maoists you will get another story. If you go to a place totally under Maoist dominance, how can they say anything else?

I mean, there are areas which are not visited by the police still. So if someone says the Salwa Judum and the police went to a village, which is totally inside the area under Maoist dominance, it becomes difficult to believe those accounts.

Image: Salwa Judum leader Mahendra Karma in Charma town of Kanker district in Chhattisgarh.
Photograph: Manpreet Romana/AFP/Getty Images

Also read: Understanding the Maoist threat

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