MLA survives Maoists, now fights conspiracy theorists

JAGDALPUR/RAIPUR: The shrapnel wound on his right temple covered in thick bandage, Congress MLA Kavasi Lakhma sat up and faced the TV cameras from a hospital bed in Jagdalpur, a day after Maoists killed 24 people, including Nand Kumar Patel, his party chief in Chhattisgarh.
Part of the convoy the Maoists had attacked, Lakhma had survived. Dazed but composed, he interspersed his otherwise coherent account with the curious refrain, “This was the first time I have seen or spoken with Naxals.” It could be plain shock or the fact that Lakhma had anticipated the storm that would follow and wished to defend himself.
After crouching in a ditch to save himself from Maoists’ bullets, Lakhma and Patel had surrendered to the guerillas together. The Maoists killed Patel and his son but allowed Lakhma and his driver to go. It did not take long for insinuations to surface in Raipur, connecting Lakhma’s ‘miraculous escape’ to the Maoist attack. Lakhma had asked for a route change, newspaper reports said. Not just a route change, the date of the Parivartan Yatra, as the campaign was called, was changed at his behest, they added.
While there are many takers for a political conspiracy that would implicate Congress politicians in an attack on their colleagues, party spokespersons have debunked such theories.
The yatra was rescheduled to May 25 since the air ambulance needed to fly disabled former chief minister Ajit Jogi was unavailable on May 22, the yatra’s original date, they say.
As for a change of route, the highway taken by the convoy was the shortest route connecting Sukma to Jagdalpur. The longer route, via Dantewada, is not much safer. “If the police did not safeguard this route, why would it safeguard the other?” said Shailesh Trivedi, a Congress spokesman who alleged the theories were originating from the BJP government keen to deflect blame. “I tried to intervene when the Naxals were taking away the PCC chief. But they threatened me,” said Lakhma.
In the eye of a storm, Lakhma finds himself in a predicament similar to the adivasis in his constituency who are often accused of colluding with the Maoists. Elected twice from Konta constituency in Sukma district, the 52-year-old is a popular adivasi leader. His constituents identify with him since like many of them he has not been to school and farmed a small patch of land and tended to buffaloes before his political career began. The grassroots leader dresses in a simple lungi which once led the gatekeepers of Raj Bhavan to turn him away when he arrived for the governor’s tea party.
As the sole Congress MLA in Bastar, Lakhma is the first to reach sites of controversial encounters to demand inquiries in alleged killings of innocent adivasis. This infuriates the BJP government: In 2007, the district collector recommended that Lakhma’s security be withdrawn since he faces no threat from Maoists. But the same politics endears him to his constituents who, on account of living inside Maoist dominated territory, are seen as suspects by security forces, and who often seek Lakhma's help to escape detentions or protest police torture.
Perhaps this is what made the Maoists spare Lakhma’s life, allowing him to escape, instead of killing him. Not that his escape is exceptional. After they had isolated Karma, Patel and his son, the Maoists had allowed all others to escape, including former MLAs.
And yet, Lakhma might have got killed. Investigators have not ruled out the possibility that the SUV carrying Patel was the real target of the landmine explosion triggered by the Maoists. It was just one or two cars short of the Bolero that was blown to pieces. And riding inside the SUV, along with Patel and his son, was Lakhma himself.