Indian state shuts down to protest massacre of police

New Delhi - India's central state of Chhattisgarh observed a shutdown Thursday to protest the massacre of 76 police officers by Maoists in the worst attack by the rebels to date.

Roads were deserted, schools closed, and shops and businesses were shut across the state capital, Raipur, and key cities such as Bilaspur, Durg, Korba, Raigarh and Bhilai, the IANS news agency reported.

The shutdown was called by the state's opposition Indian National Congress party.

According to reports coming in from the state's Maoist stronghold in Bastar in southern Chhattisgarh, the shutdown also disrupted life in five districts in that region. Shopkeepers closed their shutters while traffic and businesses were affected in these areas.

Chhattisgarh Congress chief Dhanendra Sahu said the strike was called to protest the "flawed policies" of the state's ruling Bhartiya Janata Party that had resulted in the deaths of the policemen.

About a dozen industrial bodies, including the Chhattisgarh Chamber of Commerce and Industry, supported the shutdown to express their solidarity with the dead security personnel.

The rebels ambushed and killed 76 policemen, 75 of them belonging to a federal paramilitary force, in the forests of Bastar's Dantewada district Tuesday.

The attack sparked outrage across India with opposition parties demanding a strong government response.

"We will launch a full probe into what went wrong, look into the lapses," federal Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said Thursday.

More than 1,300 people have been killed since January 2009 in violence linked to the Maoist insurgency, which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has called the gravest internal security threat facing India.

The Maoists claim they are fighting for the rights of tribal people, the poor and the landless and operate in some of the country's poorest regions that have benefited little from India's recent economic gains.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/317654,indian-state-shuts-down-to-protest-massacre-of-police.html.