SUMMARY

The Peoples Liberation Front of India (PLFI) is a Naxal insurgency that operates in eastern India along the border between Odisha and Jharkhand States. Relatively little is known about the group, which media sources often conflate with other Naxal groups operating in the area (such as the Jharkhand Liberation Tigers and Pahari Cheeta). According to some reports, the group formed at least as early as 2008 as an indirect result of the 2004 merger of Indias two largest Naxalite groups, the Peoples War Group (PWG) and the Maoist Communist Center of India (MCC) into the Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist). Allegedly, members of the MCC unhappy with the merger eventually broke away to form the PLFI. A PLFI spokesman declared in 2008 that the groups objective is to assist other Maoist insurgencies in creating a new democratic republic of India. However, relations between the PLFI and other Naxal insurgencies are not typically cooperative.

The PLFIsignificantly escalated its operations in 2012, and met (and exceeded) the UCDP threshold for one-sided violence for the first time. Over the course of the year PLFI members executed dozens of civilians for refusing to meet taxation demands, collaborating with police, refusing to join the organization, or failing to abide by the PLFI's standards of moral behavior.

PLFI first became active as a one-sided actor in UCDP data in 2012, when the one-sided violence resulted in more than 25 civilian deaths. The threshold was reached sometime between January and October of that year when attacks by PLFI had resulted in 96 deaths.