Southern States - Andhra Pradesh   

How safe is CM's chopper?

By M. Malleswara Rao

Hyderabad Oct. 3. Is the helicopter being used by the Chief Minister, N. Chandrababu Naidu, also risky ? It appears that the aircraft has long been a target of the People's War.

There were at least two occasions when PW naxalites had a close encounter with the aircraft from their forest sanctuaries. In 2001, they wanted to shoot the copter down using an AK-47 rifle but the outcome was a narrow escape with the plane coming out of the range within split seconds. This startling revelation was available from the documents seized by the police from an encounter spot on the Warangal-Khammam borders a year later on information given by some surrendered naxalites.

According to sources in the Government, the shootout attempt was made from a hill at a border village in Warangal district, Laknavaram, where the extremists assembled for a meeting. But, even as they were positioning the Kalashnikov, the aircraft zoomed past the range, avoiding a crash, and flew to Karimnagar district where the Chief Minister was to participate in a function. The second occasion cited by the sources based on the seized documents was again during the same year on June 1 when the Chief Minister visited Warangal district for laying the foundation-stone for the Godavari Lift Irrigation scheme at Devadula. In view of the landmine scare, Central forces were posted along the 5-km kutcha road leading to the river bank, and journalists covering the event abandoned their vehicles and reached the spot by foot along with officials, covering the distance .

The ultras lurking somewhere in the forest had an "opportunity" to strike the helicopter which came into their sight while reaching the village after an aerial survey of the floods in the river near Inchampalli but they gave up the idea on the ground that the Chief Minister's visit was for a long-pending developmental project and if they did anything, there would be public outcry. Any shootout would have been a major catastrophe because, the helicopter that day had many Ministers on board, including P. Ashok Gajapathi Raju (Revenue). The sources, however, dismiss this theory and say that if the plan was true and if it was abandoned, it might have been due to a confusion. The confusion was that in all, three copters came to the place at that point of time carrying other Ministers and officials.

Were these narrations put out by the naxalites in the seized papers "false" ? Or are the seized documents themselves "fake" ? The sources, however, maintain that that the PWG capacity in this regard cannot be under-estimated if the rocket launchers and grenades seized from some other places were any indication.

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