If the Dantewada massacre displayed the alarming fire power of the Maoists, the organisation?s growing presence in cyber space is a further cause for alarm. Security agencies dealing with the outlawed CPI(Maoist) say the outfit has got a dedicated wing to use cyberspace as an effective tool to mount campaigns, communicate and further the cause of the revolution.
A recent example is the e-mail threat sent to Orissa chief minister Naveen Patnaik, warning that his residence and other important landmarks would be blown up. The underground outfit threatened to deploy a cyber attack team and destroy Orissa?s ?internet backbone?. The police said the IP address originated in the Czech Republic. The mail also claimed that the Maoists were behind the temporary shutdown of the Orissa government?s official website, orissagov.nic.in earlier this month.
The security forces operating in the three states of Bihar, Orissa and West Bengal have started zeroing in on the cyber capability of the Maoists. A dedicated wing with leading cyber experts has started tracing the IP addresses of some websites, portals and blogs in which the articles of senior Maoist leaders are posted along with periodic statements.
A senior official leading the anti-Maoist operations said the Maoists had developed a unique style of using the servers of foreign countries. ?After having monitored the seditious contents and statements of the Maoists regularly posted on two websites? bannedthought.net and naxalrevolution.com?we appointed our technical team to trace the IP addresses. But, for both the sites, the IP addresses were found to be located in foreign countries,? said the official.
?The location of the IP address of banned thought.net has been traced to the US, and the IP address for naxalrevolution.com has been traced to Germany. We cannot divulge the names of the places to which the servers belong, but we communicated the information to the police there and interrogated some people belonging to the team working for the Maoists,? said a senior official.
As per reports of the Intelligence Bureau, the cyber wing of the Maoists works under their ?publication and propaganda wing? which is led by a senior Maoist known by the pseudonym, Nirmal Da, a state committee member residing in central Kolkata. ?We have information that Nirmal Da has roped in five-six students of computer engineering In Jadavpur University who work for the cyber wing,? said a senior CID official.