Bhubaneswar: As many as 24 Maoists, including eight women, were killed by security forces in a gunbattle which also left a Greyhounds commando dead near the Andhra-Odisha border on Monday, police said.
Acting on intelligence inputs, a combined team of Andhra Pradesh and Odisha Police carried out the operation in the Bejjangi forest in Odisha’s Malkangiri district early in the day.
“A total 24 Maoists have been killed in the encounter and a jawan succumbed to his injuries,” Malkangiri Superintendent of Police Mitrabhanu Mohapatra said. He, however, said the dead Maoists would be identified only after the bodies reached the district police.
The Maoists belonged to the outlawed Communist Party of India-Maoist. Of the two personnel of Greyhounds, an anti-Naxalite force of the Andhra Pradesh, injured and flown to the King George Hospital in Visakhapatnam for treatment, Md Abu Bakar succumbed to his injuries. Mohapatra said they had got the information about the presence of around 40 Maoists in the area. Top Maoist cadre Ramakrishna alias RK is said to have managed to escape during the fighting.
“We had information about the gathering of members of Andhra-Odisha Border Special Zone Committee,” Odisha Police chief K.B. Singh said. “The joint operation was led by the Andhra Pradesh Police and Greyhounds played a major role in it,” he said. The officer said 10 .303 rifles, two SLRs and four AK-47 guns and some Maoist kits were seized from the spot.
Andhra Pradesh Director General of Police N. Sambasiva Rao said a helicopter was rushed to the scene to bring the injured personnel as well as Maoists to Visakhapatnam for treatment. He said the police asked the Maoists to surrender but they opened fire, forcing the police to retaliate.
In Hyderabad, revolutionary poet Varavara Rao alleged that police killed the Maoists after attacking their meeting. Most of the slain Maoists hailed from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Varavara Rao demanded that a murder case be booked against the policemen involved in the attack. “Did Maoists carry out any attack after the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh? Then where was the need for this fake encounter?” asked Rao, a leader of Veerasam, a body of revolutionary writers. Rao also demanded an inquiry into the incident by a sitting judge of the high court.
