HYDRABAD, India, Dec. = 28, Reuter: Six plan loads of elite police commandos have been flown to South India to help local forces rescue six senior government Officers abducted by left its guerrillas, officials said on Monday.

The officials in this capital of Andhra Pradesh state said eight officers, including a State Governor’s son, were ambushed by people’s war group guerrillas in a rural area on Sunday night.

They said the guerrillas released two women officers that same evening but held six men hostage against the release of guerrillas recently jailed in the State.

State police officials told reporters the police commandos were dispatched by the Home Ministry in New Delhi to join local security forces in a rescue mission. They gave no further details.

In New Delhi, junior Home Minister P. Chidambaram said the Central government was concerned about the abuctions.

“We have promised them (the Andhra Pradesh government), assistance in every possible way”, he said.

The people’s war group is an offshoot of the Naxalites, an extreme Marxist movement which took its name from a 1967 peasant uprising in Naxalbari in Eastern India.

The movement, which advocates armed revolution, was outlawed in the early 1970s. But Naxalite bands still operate in Southern and Eastern India.

In the past two weeks, Andhra Pradesh police have raided Naxalite hideouts in West Godavari and Vishakhpatnam districts on the Bay of Bengal coast, jailing suspected guerrillas and seizing weapons.

Officials said the eight officers were returning to district headquarters from a meeting with tribal leaders in east Godavari district when they were ambushed. The officers had been travelling with security escorts.

The kidnap victims included Andhra Pradesh State Principal Secretary S.R. Sanakaran and Vijay Kumar, a Development Agency official and son of Bihar State Governor Pendekanti Venkatasubbaiah.

Others included the District Collector the top local official hi: assistants and other development agency officers.

Article extracted from this publication >> January 1, 1988