If you take any village, women's lives are difficult because of poverty. There are issues like bigamy and forced marriage.

Sexual violence is one of the most terrible things to talk about. In Chhattisgarh, there have been a number of cases where girls have been raped both inside Salwa Judum camps and have also been kept as sex slaves by some of the Salwa Judum leaders.

What about the women who have joined the Naxalites?

Almost 50 percent of the Naxal fighting force are women, from what I have heard. That's a large number. Again, this needs greater investigation as to why so many women are joining the Naxalites. But right now there is no way to investigate because the situation is so bad.

Police officials have denied the rape cases. DGP Vishwa Rajan told rediff.com that the tribal people don't see rape as a form of punishment.

This is a strange romanticisation of Adivasi society, simply in order to deny that there are rape cases.

What about the condition of children?

The schooling system has collapsed. A large number of schools have closed in the area. The security forces use these schools as camps. Plus the Maoists have blasted some schools, in anticipation of the security forces coming. So there has been large-scale destruction.

The administration has shut down almost all schools. And in all the schools, teachers have been regrouped into camps. The education is in Hindi. This means the huge Telugu-speaking refugee population has no access to education.

How many child soldiers does Chhattisgarh have?

In 2006, as part of Independent Citizen's Iinitiative, we wrote open letters in the Economic and Political Weekly to both the Maoists and the government criticising their use of child soldiers. Sadly, they both are doing it.

The Maoists responded by saying, yes we are doing it, but we don't recruit people below the age of 16. They gave some stupid justification about how childhood has no meaning in Chhattisgarh.

But the Chhattisgarh government and the Government of India just denied it. Their blatant denial is tragic.

We don't know how many child soldiers are there in the region. The police has not provided any information on underage SPOs. But every observer who has gone there, has said that SPOs look underage. I have come across many SPOs who are underage. In fact, the brother of an SPO told me that almost 75 percent of SPOs are between the ages of 16 and 22.

Image: Most Special Police Officers are aged between 16 and 22, says Nandini Sundar, quoting her sources

Also read: Armed might won't defeat the Naxals

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