Maoists kill 20-year-old Jharkhand girl who left to pursue education

Pakistan’s Malala Yousafzai became the youngest-ever Nobel Prize laureate after she was attacked by the Taliban for espousing the cause of education for girls. However, closer home, 20-year-old Sanjeeta Kumari alias Guddi was found in  Jharkhand on Thursday, and is suspected to have been killed by Maoists for leaving the group to pursue education, report the Hindustan Times .

Kumari was reportedly part of the Maoists for the last eight years and was murdered because she decided pursue education instead.

She had reportedly run away from the Maoists, whom she had joined at the age of 11, and had enrolled herself in a local school before she was brutally murdered.

“I cannot surrender because the moment my leaders come to know, they will kill my parents and siblings. I will be able to study as long as I am not identified and captured or my bosses in the jungle do not take me away forcibly,” she had told Hindustan Times  back in July on the condition that her story wouldn’t be published.

The report mentions that she was abducted on her way home by the Naxals, who left a handwritten note saying she had to die because she didn’t heed their warning.

In her interview with Hindustan Times   before her death, she recounted joining the insurgents, her rise from cook to a weapons expert, the sexual exploitation in the camp as well as her relationship with a zonal commander.

The involvement of minors with Maoists in Jharkhand has been in the news for some time now. In June, there were reports of four children being among the 12 Maoists killed by the CRPF in Bhalwahi village in Palamau district in June this year. Jharkhand DGP DK Pandey was quoted as saying by The Indian Express as saying that if children were a part of the Maoist squad, they would be killed.

In August, Hindustan Times had reported that a CPI (Maoist) squad had lured away three teenage girls from Jiyan and Maheshpur villages in Jharkhand.

While the fate of many youngsters joining the insurgents, voluntarily or involuntarily, is uncertain, the fact that Guddi had the courage to break away was commendable.  Her death is perhaps another reminder about just how bad things are in the regions where Maoists hold sway.