The man who stood before the television cameras in bare feet and handcuffs was described as a top leader of a Maoist terrorist group. He had already been sentenced in absentia for the murder of a politician from the Jatiyo Samajtantrik Dal (JSD) party. Now in the mainstream, JSD too had once warred against the state. The arrested man belonged to the Purbo-Bangla Communist Party (PBCP), one of the oldest armed Maoist clusters in the country reaching back to times of East Bengal. On camera, he explained without much emotion that in a country where 90 percent of the people had nothing and ten percent had everything, his group's activities were justified. Media, political figures, the widow of the politician he was accused of killing, and the general public all hailed his capture.
The next day, newspapers reported the captured man's death. The authorities said that his supporters had engaged the police in a shootout while the latter was on a hunt for his arms cache and that the man was killed in the crossfire. His corpse made it on television the next night.
The number of such "crossfire" deaths has reached nearly 300 in the last six months and many if not most of the victims have been members of underground Maoist parties. They are dubbed choromponthi (extremist) or shontrashi (terrorist) and these terms are muddled together in the public mind. The campaign afoot seems to be part of an official pacification effort that various successive governments have implemented against the Maoists, who proliferate in the rural areas, especially in several south-western districts bordering India. There is little protest from within Bangladesh when it comes to the Maoist deaths, though human rights groups and several Western governments have condemned the "crossfire" killings as extra-judicial. "It's even possible that criminals are killed and then dubbed 'choromponthi shontrashi' because people seem to be more willing to tolerate actions against them," says Prof Abrar Chowdhury of Dhaka University.
Maoists have no base among the middle class or support in the media, whose members have been their targets at the regional level. People living in areas where the Maoists operate tell of extortion rackets, killings, smuggling and other unlawful activities. Though Bangladesh is reported to be a den of armed Islamic insurgents, it is the Maoists who kill or are killed every day. Disorganized, with no power base, almost pre-ideological, and armed with crude weapons, they seem simply to be hitting out at all institutions and systems within reach. Yet in spite of their high casualties, they have no difficulty in finding recruits to fight and to die. As they have done for the past 35 years.