Police hot on Maoists' trail

Bhubaneswar:(visakeo) Director General of Police (DGP) Gopal Chandra Nanda on Monday claimed that the outlawed leftwing rebels were on the defensive, after the marathon encounter that began on Saturday night in the bordering areas of the southern districts of Ganjam and Kandhamal.The DGP, who briefed Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik here at the State Secretariat, said security forces had recovered a huge cache of arms and ammunition looted from the Nayagarh District Armoury and Police Training School during the ongoing combing operations.

"We have recovered 115 303 rifles, one carbine and half a truckload of ammunition," DGP Nanda, said. He also confirmed that the casualty on the Maoists side was more than 20, but failed to give an exact number. "We are not searching for the bodies. We are concentrating on the combing operations," he said. He added that the villagers were informing them about the bodies from time to time. As many as 1,100 weapons of different makes and around two lakh live bullets had been looted by hundreds of armed Maoists from Nayagarh district on Friday night. The Maoists were virtually trapped inside the forest with all the escape routes being sealed by the police. The militants were left with only two options, either be killed or captured, the DGP further said.

Meanwhile, combing operations continued for the third consecutive day on Monday against hundreds of armed Maoists in several parts of the State following the Nayagarh mayhem on Friday. The operation, one of the biggest in the history of encounters against the leftwing guerrillas, began after information was received that the militants had moved to the borders of Ganjam and Kandhamal district and were hiding on a hilltop in a bid to escape to the neighbouring State. Senior police officials supervising the combing operation, however, maintained that the casualty from the Maoists side would rise as a number of them were seriously injured during the encounter at the Gasama hill bordering Ganjam and Phulbani district during the last three days.

A fierce encounter was going on in at least four places as the heavily armed Maoists were divided into various small groups and moving into the interior villages inside the dense forest in a bid to flee from the State. Hundreds of security personnel were pursuing the Maoists in the forests near Gasama hill in Ganjam district where the rebels have taken shelter, Additional DGP MM Praharaj said. Praharaj, who is leading the operation, said several rounds of gun battles were going on with the rebels since Saturday. He said the fleeing Maoists had split into groups. "So we are chasing them from all sides." The people living in the forest informed that they had seen about 20 bodies of the Maoists in their localities but we believe it could be much more," he said.

Reports reaching here said the Maoists, in the face of a heavy encounter, had dispersed from the Gasama forest where they were hiding and moved to nearby forest and interior villages on foot. As many as two companies of Greyhound police from Andhra Pradesh, four companies of CRPF, three companies of the Special Operation Group and over 30 battalions of the OSAP, besides police force drawn from four southern Orissa districts.