Maoists forcing induction of children in Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, says government

New Delhi: Government on Tuesday said it had got intelligence reports that Maoists are forcing induction of at least one child from each family in certain villages and districts of Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh. “As per the intelligence reports, in the current year, incidents of Maoists forcing at least one child from each family to join the outfit has been reported from areas under police stations Senha (district Lohardaga), Bishnupur (district Gumla) in Jharkhand and police station Ambabeda (district Kanker) in Chhattisgarh,” Minister of State for Home Haribhai Parthibhai Chaudhary said in a written reply in Lok Sabha. [caption id=“attachment_1791949” align=“alignleft” width=“380” class=" “]  Representational image. AFP/File photo.[/caption] The left wing extremist groups, the Minister said, particularly the CPI (Maoist) recruit minors, both boys and girls from the tribal belt of LWE affected areas in the states of Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra and Odisha. “The idea behind recruiting tribal children is to wean them away from their rich traditional cultural moorings and indoctrinate them into Maoist ideology. Such children are asked to perform multifarious tasks such as acting as informers, fighting with non-lethal weapons like sticks etc,” he said. In a separate reply, Chaudhary said a large number of Maoist cadres, 327, have surrendered in Bastar region in the current year. PTI