BRINGING MANHAS HOME

THE WEEK brings you the inside story of how a nonagenarian social worker, a tribal leader and a group of local journalists secured the safe release of Rakeshwar Singh Manhas, a CoBRA commando captured by the Maoists of Bastar

- SRAVANI SARKAR

His heart skipped a beat when he saw a young, masked gunman in mili-tary fatigues walking out from behind the stand of tamarind trees. He later told me that it was not out of fear or anxiety. He just realised that the crucial moment had finally arrived.

“Who is Telam Boraiya?” asked the young man.

“That would be me,” replied Boraiya, 71, the Bijapur district president of Gondwana Samaj, a prominent tribal organisation in Chhattisgarh. He was sitting on a charpoy surrounded by a growing throng of villagers, at the Tummel settlement in Sukma district.

It was April 8, five days after Maoists ambushed a joint team of the 210th Commando Battalion for Resolute Action (CoBRA) and the Bastariya Battalion of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), and the District Reserve Group and the Special Task Force of the Chhattisgarh Police, and killed 22 jawans. Tummel is barely 10km from the ambush site that lies between Jonaguda and Tekulguda villages in Sukma district.

“Come with me, the commanders want to talk to you,” the young man said. Boraiya agreed, but he insisted that Sukhmati Hapka, the 38-year-old vice president of the Bijapur Gondwana Samaj, go with him.

The duo was taken on a motorcycle to a spot about a kilometre away, where six senior Maoists, headed by a lady commander in her early 50s, waited. They were later told that she was Manila, secretary of the Pamed area committee of the CPI (Maoist). “Her appearance was not so daunting, despite the uniform and the gun,” said Boraiya. “But her presence was quite intimidating.”