Maoists are planning to make fresh recruitments, specially targeting 12-year-olds and above, as they were running short of manpower in Assam, according to sources in the security forces.
The Maoists have chosen the festival season to scout for youths from tea gardens and ethnic groups in the tea belt for recruiting them into the insurgent fold, the sources said.
They were also planning to recruit youths through their allies sending details through WhatsApp about the youths’ education, family background and location, the sources said.
Though the recruitment drive started a year back, the process has now been speeded up due to shortage of manpower in the Maoist camps as two batches, after their 18-month training in Jharkhand and Odisha, were ready to arrive by next January, they said.
In the belt along the Brahmaputra, short documentary films are loaded in 1GB/2GB mobile hand sets so that the impressionable boys of aged 12 and 13 years are influenced and brainwashed to join the Naxalite movement, sources said. Seven upper Assam districts of Dhemaji, Jorhat, Lakhimpur, Dibrugarh, Tinsukia, Sivasagar and Golaghat have borders with neighbouring hill states, while the belt along the river is a breeding ground for Naxal activities, sources added.- PTI
