NEW DELHI: Left-wing rebels in the rural Chhattisgarh state have kidnapped a senior bureaucrat at gun point. Nearly a 100 Maoists rebels swooped on Alex Paul Menon's – a district collector in the Sukhma district – convoy killing his two bodyguards and fleeing with their ‘catch'. Menon was on his way to attend a government outreach program in the area. The young Menon belongs to the elite Indian Administrative Service (IAS) cadre and was posted as district collector, the top official of the backward Sukhma district, which is one of the several score districts in the country, spread across Indian states, which are affected by Maoist violence. Police believe that Menon is believed to have been taken by the rebels to the thickly forested area of Kerlapal, one of their strongholds and where government's writ barely runs. Indian authorities are already struggling to negotiate with the rebels in yet another kidnapping drama, that of Odishastate MLA Jina Hikaka, who has been in custody of insurgents for nearly a month now in the neighboring state. Experts feel that the rebels had sensed blood in the government's decision to negotiate with the rebels in the Hikaka case in Odihsa, which had emboldened them and spurred the rebels to kidnap Menon in Chhattisgarh. Chhattisgarh chief minister Raman Singh assured that “every necessary step” would be taken to secure the release of Menon.
