Sixty-nine-year-old top CPI (Maoist) leader and Central Committee and politburo member Katakam Sudarshan alias Anand was perhaps one of the visible faces of the then People’s War Group, who started the culture of giving interviews to media in the forests.
His one and only lengthy interview soon after assuming charge as secretary of the newly created North Telangana Special Zone Committee took place in the then naxal-affected Manala forest in September 1996.
This correspondent had just joined Nizamabad district headquarters as The Hindu’s representative in September 1996 and was among the six select journalists invited by Katakam Sudarshan for what turned out to be his first and last interview.
Those were the days when naxal activity was at its peak in North Telangana and not a day passed by without an incident. Whether it was naxal violence or the retaliatory act by the police, blasts, damage to government properties, execution of people branded as informers and killing of naxalites in encounters was the order of the day.
The group of journalists met at the Nizamabad bus stand, boarded a bus to Bheemgal with the task that all should reach Bheemnagar, a tribal hamlet in the forest area of Manala by evening. A rickety Commander jeep is what the journalists had to take from Bheemgal to reach Bheemnagar during the hour-long back-breaking journey.
Almost 25 years after that interview, the journalists recalled the fond memory of that chance encounter with the naxal leader, who went on to hold the topmost position in the Maoist party later.
The arrival of the strangers in the hamlet itself created a sense of unease among the residents. “They were all tight-lipped when we asked if a cup of tea was available. Residents simply stepped back and avoided any contact with the group,” recalled Pinnam Lingam, senior Telugu journalist.
Pittala Ravinder, then bureau chief of Vaartha Telugu daily in Nizamabad too recollected the tense journey to the forest. “We walked to the outskirts of Bheemnagar abutting the forest. A brief trek on the dirty mud road led us to a wooded area in the pitch darkness where we stopped and in a few minutes, uniformed armed people came and took us inside,” he remembers.
Mallepalli Laxmaiah, senior journalist then representing Suprabhatham Telugu fortnightly said Katakam Sudarshan chose to speak to the journalists as he had taken charge as the NTSZC secretary. “He wanted to give an insight into the working of the PWG (now CPI-Maoists). In the three hours we all were with him he spoke about the agrarian crisis, farmers’ suicide, repression on the naxal movement,” he said.
Mr. Laxmaiah said it was with Katakam Sudarshan that the Maoist party leadership started interactions with the media. “Till that time, only Kondapalli Seetaramaiah had given an interview and after that it was Sudarshan, who spoke to us,” he said, adding that the late leader was very softspoken person committed to the Maoist movement till his last.
All the journalists, who had met the senior naxal leader on that day, remember how they all shared a frugal meal comprising rice and a curry served in a ‘vistaraku’ by naxal sympathisers.
