By Mike Talavera

Last Saturday, police arrested computer science student Ugge Bharath in the Bijapur district of Karnataka state under suspected association with the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and assisting them with intercepting government communications. This baseless apprehension comes as the ultra-reactionary Indian government has intensified its crackdown against the People’s Liberation Guerilla Army (PLGA), which is led by the CPI(Maoist).

A few days before Bharath’s arrest, a PLGA column executed two police officers and punished another in the village of Veeravaram, in the border district of Visakhapatnam, after the officers were tried by a revolutionary court and found guilty of having murdered two CPI(Maoist) members in 2014.

That same week, the PLGA infiltrated the property of capitalist Ashok Sau in the village of Mayapur in Jharkhand, incinerating several of his vehicles and appropriating around 700,000 Indian rupees, the equivalent of nearly $10,000.

Also this month, Nalluri Srinivas Rao, a landlord and senior member of the bourgeois Indian Telangana Rashtra Samithi party, was kidnapped by the PLGA and executed for extorting crops from peasants and recruiting police informants.

These bold actions by the PLGA have defied recent efforts by the Indian government, led by reactionary Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, to stop the advances of the CPI(Maoist). In the past few months, the government has enlisted and financed mercenary groups, commanded by the bourgeoisie and big landlords, to counter Maoist forces. These gangs have been known to threaten and coerce peasants into their ranks as well as raid and loot villages.

Some of these groups, like the Danteshwari Tigers Unit and the Bastariya Battalion, have been trained by the Central Reserve Police Force. The Interior Minister Nityananda Rai also said recently that the government is considering using the Indian army against the PLGA.

These ramped-up methods of repression represent the desperate lashing out of an old, dying state. With each successful strike against the enemy, the PLGA shows the masses of India that it is not only possible to conquer power from the bourgeoisie-it is a necessity to end their suffering and oppression.