Even as the hostage crisis winds down, with the release of the Sukma DC currently under negotiation, urgent questions persist regarding the conduct of the state during these crises and, more broadly, the fundamentals of ‘negotiating with terrorists’ or with ‘hostage takers’. There has been much commentary on the state’s ‘capitulation’ and the obvious and adverse consequences, both of releasing active Maoists from jail, and of the ‘demonstration effect’ which will ‘naturally’ encourage future abductions, given the success of the present instances.
Data and assessments from SAIR can be freely published in any form with credit to the South Asia Intelligence Review of the South Asia Terrorism Portal
ASSESSMENT
INDIA
The Hostage State Ajai Sahni Editor, SAIR; Executive Director, Institute for Conflict Management & SATP
A rolling crisis of high profile abductions, initiated with the kidnapping of two irresponsible Italians in Odisha on March 14, 2012, continues to hold the national attention, with Alex Paul Menon, the District Collector (DC) of the newly formed Sukma District in Chhattisgarh, still in the custody of the Maoist’s Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee (DKSZC), since his abduction on April 21, 2012. Significantly, even as the Menon abduction is discussed threadbare, little mention is made of the two policemen guarding him, who were murdered in cold blood by the Maoists. In the…
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Impressions 