The C60 Command Force that ventured inside the 6,500-km Abhujhmaad area was led by Additional Superintendent of Police Ajay Bansal and included Commander Moitram Madavi, who has been a part of several successful missions.
IN WHAT police are calling a major blow to Maoist morale, Maharashtra’s elite C60 commando force entered Abujhmaad in south Bastar last month for possibly their first-ever engagement with the extremist outfit in that area.
Police said the Maoists they encountered included senior cadres such as Sonu alias Bhupati alias Mallojula Venugopal Rao, the second-in-command of the CPI (Maoist) Central Military Commission, and Tarakka, and said the Naxals suffered at least one casualty before making good their escape.
The C60 Command Force that ventured inside the 6,500-km Abhujhmaad area was led by Additional Superintendent of Police Ajay Bansal and included Commander Moitram Madavi, who has been a part of several successful missions.
The troops walked nearly 100 km for five days, starting February 6 from the Lahiri outpost in Bhamragad and returning unharmed, after four nights in the jungle. Saying the Maoists may have not seen such an operation coming, Gadchiroli Superintendent of Police Shailesh Balkawade said, “Our idea was to send the message that no area was safe for them.”
The mission also revealed that the Maoists had retreated from vast stretches following police area domination exercises.
In 2006-07, a police team had penetrated the area near Ghamandi. “But this could be the first time the Naxals engaged police in the area that is their safe zone,” then S P Shirish Jain, who led that operation, said.
Bansal said the February 11 operation was based on pin-point information from five Maoists captured in an operation in Abujhmaad area on January 28. Detailing its complexity, the Additional SP said they walked with arms, ammunition and food, up steep inclines. The rain on February 6 and 7 made tracking footprints difficult. “But we managed to get horse footprints as Naxals use horses to carry their stuff in such parts. But we had police guides, so we could trek avoiding booby traps.”
Bansal said what gave them an edge was that the Maoists were not sure whether they were Maharashtra or Chhattisgarh Police. “This made it difficult for them to guess in which direction we would move.” He said sources and signs of mourning at a village indicated they may have killed one Maoist.
The Gadchiroli police sees the operation as part of a series of blows to Maoists over the past two years in the district, including the April 2018 encounter in which 40 were killed in Boria-Kasnasur in Etapalli tehsil, including top commanders, Srinu, Sainath and Nandu, the capture of others such as Narmada (the head of the Gadchiroli division) and husband Kiran as well as Dinkar Gota, and the surrender of Vilas Kolha, Radha Majji, Gokul and Deepak apart from dalam commanders and members.
However, Bansal said, they needed to keep pushing. “Success depends on a combination of factors such as intelligence, willpower, training and execution on the ground to surprise the enemy. Also, we get only six months of the year to try and get there since the area remains cut off for the rest of the time due to rains. And we need to have strategic posts as close to the Maoists’ safe zone as possible. It’s clearly a long haul.”
Source: Read Full Article
