State govts not serious in choking explosives supply to Maoists: CRPF DG

New Delhi: CRPF chief Dilip Trivedi on Thursday accused state governments of not making “serious and concerted efforts” to stop supply of explosives to Maoists.

Trivedi, who is set to retire from service in the next two days, said “had systemic problems been addressed at the right time and not allowed to perpetuate, we would have had solutions to many problems….Problems we see in Jammu and Kashmir, North-East or the Left Wing Extremism theatre.

“We have not found any solutions to these problems and there is so much politics, internal dimensions involved in these and many other such scenarios,” Trivedi told reporters here. He retires on November 30.

He headed CRPF, the country’s largest paramilitary force, for close to 15 months.

The DG alleged state governments, specifically, are not making “serious and concerted efforts” in choking the supply of explosives to Maoist groups and ultras which had claimed hundreds of lives of security forces engaged in anti-Naxal operations and counter-insurgency duties.

“Why is that the explosives have not been stopped from reaching the Naxals? There is free availability of explosives (to Naxals). Why is the state government not doing its job? The DMs and other authorities….They should be doing it,” the 1978-batch Uttar Pradesh cadre IPS officer said.

Trivedi said, “it would have been better” if illegal leakage of explosives had been stopped by state governments as central forces and agencies can do this only up to an extent.”

“If we can stop the supply of explosives (to Maoists) the level of violence and deaths in LWE areas will go down drastically. Improvised Explosive Devices and explosives are the biggest threat (to life) here today,” he said.

Trivedi alleged that by allowing pilferage of explosives, the state governments were “making money”.

“The present Maoist movement is in disarray…Their strength is at their lowest and we can throttle them (Naxals). Why are state governments not doing this?,” he said.

Trivedi said his force, after getting no cooperation on this subject, has started a home-made back-tracking of explosives exercise where force personnel try to obtain the details about the source of explosives after they are detected in LWE areas.

The DG also virtually dismissed the Union Home Ministry recently creating two committees for restructuring of this over 3-lakh personnel force which faces numerous challenges and problems.

“CRPF is the most troubled force out of all the uniformed forces in the country. We are badly overworked…This was not the first committee on this issue (restructuring of CRPF). There would be no talks about the committee after I retire,” he said. The committee has CRPF DG as its member.

He said he also faced a lot of problems being the head of the force as he got to analyse human nature and “frailities of people on the top.”

“Fifty percent of the ‘daak’ (letters) I used to get was about transfer and postings. Some were genuine but some wanted choice postings on filthiest of grounds,” he said.

Trivedi said it was his personal feeling that India had “too many laws”.

“Despite having laws like NSA, MISA…Crime incidents have been rising. We need to go back to basics,” the CRPF DG said.

PTI