Battling Rebels and Social Evils

In Chhattisgarh’s Maoist heartland, a doctor-turned-IPS officer is rebuilding the lives of tribals with love and personal care

- Puneet Nicholas Yadav

IN a region where security personnel are trained to keep emotions aside, Dr. Abhishek Pallava is a revelation. In March 2017, during a counter-insurgency operation in the heart of Chhattisgarh’s Maoist-affected Bastar, then additional SP Pallava shot Somaru, a Maoist rebel. Stunned peers looked on as Pallava rushed Somaru to a hospital for his gunshot wounds. Pallava again won hearts when in January next year, during another security operation, he entered a dilapidated house to find the ailing wife and malnourished kids of Pohru, a “wanted Maoist”; Pallava ensured that the three were admitted to a nearby government hospital.

The twin cases brought Pallava, a 2013-batch IPS officer now posted as SP in the Maoist heartland of Dantewada, many accolades. However, for Pallava, a post-graduate in psychiatry from AIIMS Delhi, it isn’t these “celebrated incidents” that he holds most dear during his experiment with “soft policing”.