Road to heaven, but less travelled

‘Welcome to heaven’, reads a sign, a peculiar memorial to the martyrs of Maoist violence, as you cross the Chintagupha base camp of paramilitary forces where CRPF jawans wait in bunkers inside a heavily-barbed compound; there’s hardly any sign of local people around.

We are on the road to Chintalnar in the Maoist stronghold, 35 km off Dornapal in the heartland of Dantewada, where more than a thousand rebels wiped out an entire CRPF battalion on Tuesday.

It’s a road less travelled. Burnt or razed schools or government structures stand along the road, a sign of total Maoist domination in the area, a domination the security forces are tasked to nullify. But as you travel on this road, you can see that the government’s rhetoric of crushing the guerrilla rebels within three years will fall flat against the sheer scale of odds it confronts.

The administration made several futile bids to build this road from Dornapal to Chintalnar and further. “Maoists call this a road of exploitation,” locals say. Police call it the road to hell, given the risks they take to travel on it. For tribal villagers, it’s of no use since it brings neither progress nor peace. They still take jungle routes to reach a place.

From Dornapal, one of the biggest Salwa Judum camp locations on Sukma-Konta Road, one needs to hire a two-wheeler or jeep to reach the place. It takes around two hours or more to reach Chintalnar by a vehicle. Once you cross Polampalli, the first of the paramilitary base camps, the bolder road is filled with crude landmines, IEDs and pressure mines planted by Maoists. “This is one of the better roads,” says Dharmendra Singh, a Chintalnar resident. “You can’t go beyond here.”

Locals say the stretch of jungles that form a contiguous territory between Bijapur to the west and Malkangiri to the east is heavily mined, a major challenge to the forces deployed in this belt. “You need to be a local,” says a tribal youth who works as a Special Police Officer at Dornapal, “if you want to go in [to remote villages] and come back unhurt.”

This road has seen several encounters between police and Maoists, villagers say. Several hamlets lie tucked in forests on both sides of the road, hamlets that police say the government has no control over — in terms of administrative reach and trust.

It’s the road that locals don’t walk frequently, since it’s strewn with landmines. But it’s the only approach to reach ration and supplies to Chintalnar, where a CRPF battalion is deployed.

On the map, Chintalnar is south of Dantewada town, toward the southern tip of Konta. It’s the region police say they are trying to retrieve from Maoists. On the map, this road links Dornapal to Dantewada, via Jagargunda. In reality, forces too use a chopper to access Jagargunda, one of the crucial police bases and Salwa Judum camps. The distance from Chintalnar to Jagargunda is 25 km, says Dharmendra, but “it will take you ages to reach there”.