IEP lists 'Communist Party of India' on list of world's 20 deadliest terror groups of 2022

Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), an Australia-based global think tank organisation, in its recent report "Global Terrorism Index 2023" has placed the "Communist Party of India" (CPI) on the list of the world's 20 deadliest terror groups of the year 2022 on the 12th position. The IEP, in its report, claimed that in 2022, the CPI was responsible for 39 deaths and 61 attacks. It also alleged that the group also injured 30 people. It is pertinent to mention that the report does not clarify whether it means CPI (Maoist)-- a banned terror group in India, or the political party in India-- CPI.

The list is topped by Islamic State (IS) which was allegedly responsible for the death of 1,045 people, and 410 attacks and injuring 644 people in 2022, according to the IEP. Interestingly, the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) is below the CPI in the deadliest terror group 2022 list of the IEP. According to the global think tank group, LeT is behind the death of eight people and was responsible for six attacks. LeT, a banned group in India, was responsible for injuring 38 people in 2022.

According to GTI 2023 report, India ranks 13 on the list of nations with the impact of terrorism. India's score is 7.175, while Afghanistan which ranks no. 1 on the list, has a score of 8.822. On the other hand, Uruguay, South Africa, Rwanda and Bahrain are the least terrorism-affected countries, according to the IEP, with a score of 0.826 each.

GTI 2023

The GTI is based on data from Dragonfly’s TerrorismTracker database and uses December 31, 2022 as the cut-off date. Incidents are only included in the dataset if they are consistent with TerrorismTracker’s definition of terrorism, which means recorded incidents may vary from other databases.

IEP accepts the terminology and definitions used by TerrorismTracker and GTI, therefore, defines terrorism as “the systematic threat or use of violence, by non-state actors, whether for or in opposition to established authority, with the intention of communicating a political, religious or ideological message to a group larger than the victim group, by generating fear and so altering (or attempting to alter) the behaviour of the larger group.’’