Several social media users and news organisations shared a screenshot that claimed that the Communist Party of India (CPI) was listed as the 12th deadliest terror group in the world for the year 2022.
The list of terror groups was a part of the Institute of Economics and Peace's (IEP) Global Terrorism Index (GTI) report, released on Thursday, 16 March.
However, while the first list shared by the organisation did include CPI, it later issued a corrected list and replaced CPI with the Communist Party of India (Maoists).
The independent think tank records terror incident across the world and ranks countries and terror groups based on their activity in a given year.
Afghanistan retained the top spot in the list of the countries impacted by terrorism, while the deadliest terrorist groups in the last year were Islamic State (IS) and its affiliates, followed by al-Shabaab, Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) and Jamaat Nusrat Al-Islamwal Muslimeen (JNIM).
People Share The Old Screenshot
After the report was released on 16 March, several social media users and news organisations shared a screenshot showing CPI on the 12th spot in the list of "Deadliest Terror Groups of 2022".
Pratheesh Viswanath, the founder of Hindu Seva Kendra, shared the graphic on Twitter and wrote, “Congratulations Communist Party of India for being named in top 20 deadliest terror groups of 2022. Your name is found amoung your sister concerns ie jehadi outfits. Try to be in top 10 next time.”
Several news organisations also shared the claim, while some have updated their copies, others like Republic TV are yet to update the story.
IEP Clarifies and Updates List
During our keyword search, we found a report published in The Times of India that said that IEP had clarified that the inclusion of CPI in the list was due to an error.
We then looked at IEP's Twitter handle and found on their official Twitter handle a response to a user who pointed out the error.
According to IEP, the index is produced using data from the Terrorism Tracker of Dragonfly and the error in the index occurred due to the mislabelling of the Communist Party of India without “Maoist” addition.
"As soon as we were made aware, we took immediate action and corrected the report to accurately reflect the title of Communist Party of India (Maoist)," the response added.
We checked the index on IEP's website and found that the list had been updated to include "Maoist" next to CPI.
What is the Communist Party of India (Maoists)?
The CPI (Maoist) is a left-wing extremist outfit that has to its credits incidents of violence and killing of civilians and security forces. The organisation has been included in the Schedule of Terrorist Organisations along with all its formations and front organisations under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).
According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, the outfit is active in 156 districts of 13 States that include Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Uttaranchal and Kerala.
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