A poster released by the Bharatiya Janata Party government in Chhattisgarh on June 12 proudly declared: “In the last six months, 129 Maoists killed.”
The count has since gone up to 138.
This is higher than any annual tally in the past two decades, barring 2009.
And yet, there has been very sketchy reporting on these killings.
Scroll contributor Malini Subramaniam has been making difficult journeys to the sites of these encounters, deep inside the forests of Bastar, where Maoist insurgents drawn from Adivasi communities are locked in a low-intensity war with the Indian state.
Over the next few weeks, we will be working with her to put together a series of reports that raise questions about the conduct of both the security forces and the Maoist leadership.
Ground reporting like this is extraordinarily rare.
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